GIFT  ©F 


MY  NEIGHBOR 
THE  WORKINGMAN 


By 
JAMES  ROSCOE  DAY 


Chancellor  of  Svracuse  University 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


T/ 

• 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
JAMES  ROSCOE  DAY 


First  Edition  Printed  May,  1920 
Reprinted  April,  1921  • 


AFFECTIONATELY  AND   GRATEFULLY 

I   DEDICATE   THIS    BOOK 

TO   MY  WIFE 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE 7 

I.  MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN n 

II.  WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 34 

III .  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 57 

IV.  THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 81 

V.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 98 

VI.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 120 

VII.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 140 

VIII .  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 164 

IX.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 187 

X.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM  211 

XI.  MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 229 

XII .  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 245 

XIII.  MY  NEIGHBOR,  A  FREE  MAN 268 

XIV.  MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 284 

XV.   MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 302 

XVI.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND   FOES 318 

XVII.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S   RESPONSIBILITY 338 

XVIII.  MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 358 


PREFACE 

I  HAVE  written  this  book  in  no  spirit  of  antago- 
nism to  the  American  workingman.  I  have  always 
looked  upon  him,  when  he  has  been  a  true  American, 
as  the  vertebral  column  of  the  republic.  I  know  him 
and  have  lived  with  him.  I  have  been  a  working- 
man  and  know  his  thoughts.  I  have  been  with  him 
from  the  field  to  the  forest.  I  have  rounded  up 
cattle  with  him  in  the  Far  West,  on  the  back  of  a 
mustang,  before  the  cowboy  was  known  as  a 
distinct  race,  have  rolled  a  truck  on  the  deck 
of  a  steamer,  and  driven  a  stage.  I  have  been 
through  the  whole  gamut  of  the  workingman,  omit- 
ting the  saloon  and  its  kindred  precincts.  I  have 
been  pastor  in  the  greatest  city  of  the  land,  and 
known  both  the  capitalist  and  the  workingman 
there,  both  of  whom  were  in  my  congregation.  For 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  I  have  been  a 
college  president,  and  have  raised  many  thousands 
of  dollars  to  help  the  workingman's  sons  and 
daughters  through  college,  and  there  are  no  better 
students  than  they. 

I  have  not  written,  therefore,  as  a  theorist  outside 
of  my  subject,  nor  as  one  unfriendly  to  the  men 
whom  I  discuss.  I  am  in  hearty  sympathy  with 
them  from  the  man  who  labors  with  the  pick  and 
shovel  to  the  skilled  mechanic.  There  is  no  better 


PREFACE 

citizen  than  the  true,  loyal,  unperverted  American 
workingman.  He  is  instinctively  loyal.  He  is  in- 
telligent. He  knows  his  country  and  is  proud  of  it. 
He  looks  upon  his  vote  as  a  sacred  obligation,  and 
no  man  has  more  bravely  responded  to  his  country's 
call  in  war.  It  is  only  when  he  permits  himself  to 
follow  the  enemies  of  his  country,  the  alien  leaders 
who  have  insinuated  themselves  into  his  counsels, 
that  he  forgets  that  his  first  duty  is  to  his  land. 
These  blind  guides  have  spoiled  his  unions  by  plot- 
ting to  use  them  for  their  selfish  purposes.  It  will 
not  be  long  before  these  perilous  leaders  will  make 
an  open  political  declaration,  more  dangerous  than 
anything  of  the  kind  we  have  had.  I  venture  to  talk 
with  my  neighbors  plainly,  as  their  friend,  about 
their  mistakes  and  the  dangers  to  their  country  and 
to  their  homes  and  to  their  employment. 

If  it  may  be  thought  that  I  have  used  severe 
language  in  characterizing  the  workingman's  enemy, 
the  destructive  socialist,  the  obtrusive  and  patroniz- 
ing leader,  and  the  cowardly  assassin  of  innocent 
men  and  women  and  children,  the  bomb-planter,  in- 
cendiary, and  murderer,  I 'have  no  apology  to  make. 
They  are  unrepentant  and  boast  their  denial  of  God 
and  their  purpose  to  destroy  all  government  of  men. 
There  ought  to  be  one  common  and  universal 
execration  that  shall  never  cease  until  these  loath- 
some foes  of  humanity  are  forever  exterminated. 
Public  sentiment  should  leave  no  room  for  the 
destructive  socialist  in  our  country. 

8 


PREFACE 

I  have  only  to  call  the  attention  of  the  readers 
of  this  book  to  the  events  which  have  followed  since 
it  was  put  into  the  hands  of  the  publishers.  They 
are  the  insistent  demands  by  union  laborers  that 
the  President  shall  reverse  the  action  of  Congress, 
done  by  representatives  of  all  the  people,  the 
threats  of  prosecution  and  injunction  in  the  courts 
if  the  railway  bill  became  law,  and  the  plans  follow- 
ing the  passage  of  the  bill  to  defeat  at  the  polls  the 
members  of  the  United  States  Senate  and  House 
of  Representatives  "who  voted  for  it  as  enemies 
of  labor."  Is  this  country  to  be  governed  by  any 
class  of  men  by  intimidation?  What  could  be  more 
abhorrent  to  the  spirit  of  our  constitutional  liberty 
and  the  representative  and  lawful  forms  of  our 
government?  The  day  has  passed — it  never  was 
here — when  laws  can  be  passed  or  defeated  by 
threats  upon  our  free  and  fearless  franchise.  It  is 
time  that  some  one  drew  the  line  plainly  and  fear- 
lessly in  matters  of  individual  and  governmental 
rights. 

J.  R.  D. 

Syracuse  University. 


CHAPTER  I 
MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

FIFTY  years  ago  it  was  comparatively  easy  to  de- 
fine one's  neighbor  in  the  same  country.  The  people 
were  mostly  of  one  race  and  kind.  There  are  cer- 
tain conditions  that  make  the  definition  easy  now — 
nearness  of  residence  in  a  neighborhood,  intimacy 
of  friendship,  social  relations,  or  the  broad  prin- 
ciples of  a  fellow  being. 

The  old  conditions  of  homogeneity  and  proximity 
have  passed  out  by  a  marvelous  change  wrought  in 
two  generations.  We  are  living  in  a  new  world. 

Fundamental  laws  of  nature  remain  the  same. 
Fire  burns,  water  drowns,  gravitation  weighs,  elec- 
tricity energizes  or  devitalizes,  the  light  is  trans- 
parent. They  are  the  same  from  age  to  age.  The 
air  is  unchanged1,  but  it  is  found  to  have  another 
adaptation,  and  ships  float  upon  it  as  upon  a  new 
sea. 

The  inventions  of  man,  his  explorations  and  dis- 
coveries, within  the  realms  of  space  and  force,  would 
present  to  our  fathers  a  bewildering  world.  But 
to  us  they  have  passed  into  the  commonplace. 
Many  of  the  startling  things  in  the  head  lines  of 
our  daily  papers  yesterday  become  our  habit  and 
practice  to-day. 

11 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

These  vast  changes  all  have  their  place  in  a  most 
rational  and  accommodating  way.  They  excite  no 
friction.  They  are  welcomed  in  our  business  and 
given  a  cordial  place  in  our  homes.  We  make  new 
machinery  to  apply  their  efficiency  to  our  shops  and 
factories.  Franklin's  kite  and  key  drives  our  ex- 
press trains  and  lights  streets  and  homes  of  every 
metropolis.  We  rejoice  in  an  age  in  which  un- 
fathomable mysteries  have  been  penetrated  to  such 
inner  secrets  that  faith  in  the  future  of  time  and 
immortality  is  greatly  simplified. 

But  the  perplexing  and  difficult  problems  are 
man's  adjustment  to  changing  estates.  He  takes 
care  of  everything  but  himself.  He  can  measure 
the  forces  and  make  them  serve  him.  He  can  put 
a  harness  upon  the  lightning  and  apply  chemical 
force  to  commerce.  He  compels  water  and  food 
to  yield  the  secret  of  their  distinctive  bacteria,  and 
changes  the  character  of  the  metals.  He  brings 
millions  of  wealth  out  of  the  by-products  that  were 
thrown  hopelessly  into  the  refuse  heap.  There  is 
no  limit  to  his  capabilities  and  facilities  to  turn  all 
things  to  his  use.  But  the  adjustment  of  himself 
is  an  endless  and  unsolved  puzzle. 

Study  the  philosophers  who  are  busy  with  prob- 
lems in  all  their  phases,  from  eugenic  to  hygienic, 
from  prenatal  to  psychic,  with  every  possible  domes- 
tic economic  solution,  in  the  development  of  citizen- 
ship, the  slow  progress,  the  failures,  the  revisions, 
the  hopeless  tasks.  The  man  will  not  stay  placed. 

12 


* 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

You  are  not  dealing  with  natural  force  or  substance 
or  law.  There  is  nothing  fixed  about  him  but  his 
restlessness.  He  is  changing  oftener  than  the  moon 
its  phases.  Like  a  child,  what  he  sees  he  wants, 
and  what  others  have  he  thinks  belongs  to  him  or 
is  held  by  the  possessor  in  some  unjust  way.  And 
he  becomes  the  victim  of  every  jealous  and  danger- 
ous secret  purpose.  It  is  that  mind,  that  passion 
of  ambition  and  desire,  appallingly  active  or  equally 
stupid,  which  eludes  us  and  which  cannot  be  put 
into  amperes  and  kilowatts.  And  it  does  not  dwell 
apart,  an  isolated  particle.  The  great  mistake  has 
been  in  reckoning  with  it  as  an  impotent  unit,  stand- 
ing alone  and  failing  to  appreciate  the  cumulative 
force  of  these  small  personalities  as  they  gravitate 
under  a  common  impulse  and  become  a  collective 
and  consolidated  energy.  The  solitary  socialist 
amused  us.  The  soapbox  orator  who  assailed  our 
government  in  a  jargon  only  intelligible  with  diffi- 
culty excited  passing  curiosity. 

A  train  leaves  the  New  York  Central  station  for 
up  country.  Along  the  Hudson  River  a  solitary 
snowflake  strikes  the  smoke  stack  of  the  locomotive 
and  is  as  quickly  gone.  Only  the  engineer  sees  it. 
The  passengers  give  it  no  attention,  if  it  passes  the 
engineer  and  strikes  the  car  window,  for  it  melts 
away.  Others  follow  in  increasing  numbers.  They 
attract  attention  and  excite  passing  remarks.  At 
Albany  the  station  platform  is  covered  and  the  roofs 
of  the  buildings.  The  track  is  white  as  the  train 

13 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

pulls  up  the  grade.  Through  the  Mohawk  Valley 
you  cannot  see  across  the  narrow  river.  At  Utica 
the  smoke  stack  is  covered  with  snowflakes;  they 
came  faster  than  it  can  melt  them.  At  Syracuse  a 
snow  plow  is  sent  on  ahead.  The  next  day  the  trains 
are  stalled  along  the  road.  The  snowflake  was 
joined  with  others  and  together  they  became  a  storm 
that  blocked  the  mighty  railway.  The  solitary  flake 
that  melted  on  the  smoke  stake  was  a  symptom, 
a  forerunner,  a  menace. 

Are  we  in  the  midst  of  the  gathering  storm?  It 
has  been  brewing  a  long  time.  Are  we  creators  of 
the  storm?  Can  we  command  it  to  cease  and  be 
calm?  Are  we  wise  to  let  it  rage  and  send  out  our 
plows — powerful  rotary  plows?  Is  it  wise  to  in- 
crease our  storm  and  trust  to  our  devices,  our  poli- 
tics, our  free  land,  our  industries,  our  commerce, 
our  philanthropies,  our  churches  and  universities, 
and  let  the  storm  rage  ? 

Our  solitary  malcontent  did  not  melt.  He  did 
not  even  fall  into  the  melting  pot.  It  was  not 
heated  for  him.  While  he  was  outside  unassimi- 
lated  and  increasing  his  discontent,  others  joined 
him,  and  to-day  when  we  look  about  at  this  strange 
condition  of  surging  discontent  in  a  contented  land, 
we  find  the  conditions  unfriendly  to  our  attempt  to 
be  neighbors  with  thousands  who  live  in  the  same 
neighborhood.  But  they  live  in  Adullam's  Cave. 

They  have  organized  their  discontent,  and  they 
have  insisted  upon  political  recognition.  They  are 

14 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

not  strong  enough  to  rely  upon  their  votes  to  form 
a  new  national  party,  but  the  politici-ans  reckon  with 
them.  And  without  votes  to  command  a  control- 
ling place  as  a  political  party,  they  take  advantage 
of  the  free  country  they  curse,  and  assert  their 
protests  with  bombs.  It  is  no  longer  a  snowflake 
of  feeble,  solitary  protest  or  of  collective  energy. 
It  is  a  bomb.  It  is  death. 

The  more  respectable  and  law-abiding  protest  by 
strikes,  by  which  business  is  paralyzed  and  enormous 
losses  are  incurred  by  strikers  and  stricken,  and 
judgment  is  often  compelled  without  regard  to  jus- 
tice. And  the  national  administration  opens  the 
inner  door  to  the  representative  of  this  tyrannical 
form  of  government  within  the  government  and 
increases  wages  millions  beyond  the  earning  capacity 
of  the  business  to  pay,  and  debts  mount  up  to  billions 
of  dollars  and  strikes  are  kindled  in  every  part  of 
the  country.  It  was  the  policy  of  increasing  the 
storm  and  trusting  to  the  rotary  plow. 

Has  there  ever  been  such  widespread  and  uni- 
versal discontent?  And  the  blind  continues  to  lead 
the  blind.  The  elements  of  discontent  are  used  to 
create  discontentment.  More  snow,  more  shovel. 
But  it  is  our  snow  and  our  storm.  More  high  cost 
of  living  and  more  wage;  more  pay  for  less  work; 
more  envy,  less  satisfaction.  It  is  the  endless  circle 
into  nothing.  It  is  two  dollars  now,  but  two  dollars 
are  worth  less  than  one.  And  the  man  who  inquires 
for  real  and  permanent  remedy  is  not  a  neighbor. 

IS 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

He  is  met  with  epithets  and  he  will  be  fortunate 
if  his  home  is  not  bombed  or  a  bullet  put  through 
his  brain,  not  by  the  men  at  the  head  of  this  organ- 
ized unrest,  but  by  the  victim  of  insane  spasms  who 
takes  too  literally  the  speeches  which  attack  builders 
and  contractors  and  the  defenders  of  a  country 
founded  upon  the  doctrine  of  equality  of  privilege 
under  law,  and  only  under  law. 

There  must  be  a  common  interest  to  establish 
neighborliness — not  a  common  estate,  but  an  inter- 
changing relation  and  a  recognition  of  mutual  de- 
pendence. But  we  are  widening  the  separating 
space,  not  in  dollars  but  in  opposite  theory  of  gov- 
ernment and  privilege,  the  right  of  another's  prop- 
erty by  preemption. 

Men  to  be  neighbors  must  work  to  a  common 
end  for  a  common  good.  It  would  be  logical  and 
consistent  if  those  who  have  the  same  concept  of  a 
land  and  country  would  join  themselves  together 
to  secure  their  ideal.  If  they  cannot  adopt  the 
principles  with  which  millions  are  content  into  whose 
country  they  come,  why  seek  to  destroy  that  coun- 
try, overthrow  its  institutions,  and  scatter  its  prop- 
erty by  a  destructive  communism?  Such  men  can 
establish  no  claim  upon  tolerance.  It  is  gigantic 
impertinence  for  them  to  attempt  to  assert  any  right 
or  privilege.  An  hundred  and  fifty  years  pass  with 
a  government  that  has  excited  the  amazement  of 
the  greatest  statesmen  of  modern  times  and  that 
has  been  the  shelter  of  refugees  from  all  parts  of 

16 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  world.  Its  developments  of  national  resources 
are  fabulous.  Its  progress  and  successes  have  ex- 
cited the  emulation  of  all  lands.  Suddenly  there 
appears  among  us  an  outbursting  flame  of  enmity 
and  wanton  destruction. 

The  clamor  is  not  for  a  better  government,  but 
for  none.  The  demand  is  for  a  return  to  conditions 
of  the  tribal  forces  which  welcomed  the  first  white 
man  to  these  shores  with  abandonment  of  all  of  the 
fruits  of  civilization  which  they  attempt  to  over- 
throw. 

Our  country  provides  an  orderly  way  for  the  re- 
visions of  the  government.  If  a  sufficient  number 
agree,  they  can  proceed  to  change  the  constitution 
by  amendment  and  substitute  changes  in  those  parts 
where  men  are  oppressed.  Great  latitude  of  free 
speech  is  given  while  the  work  is  in  progress.  If 
that  is  hopeless,  discontented  men  have  a  second 
choice,  to  return  whence  they  came  or  content  them- 
selves with  the  conditions  as  they  find  them.  If 
they  seek  to  destroy  the  loyal  and  consecrated  sub- 
jects of  a  republic  founded  for  freemen  by  freemen, 
they  should  be  treated  as  wild  beasts  upon  the  throw- 
ing of  the  first  bomb. 

Our  government  has  been  too  careless  of  such 
deadly  reptiles.  It  is  our  country  while  we  protect 
it.  We  owe  no  man  anything  who  seeks  to  over- 
throw it.  He  should  not  be  sheltered  an  hour 
where  he  incites  others  to  join  him  in  his  effort  to 
tear  that  shelter  into  pieces.  Our  presumption 

17 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

upon  our  security,  our  mistaken  devotion  to  the 
cause  of  human  freedom  has  cost  us  two  of  our 
greatest  Presidents.  In  no  country  do  its  foes  pre- 
sume so  safely  upon  the  indifference  of  the  loyal 
people  to  attacks  upon  their  governmental  institu- 
tions. It  is  mistaken  for  supineness.  It  is  the  con- 
fidence of  loyalty. 

The  time  is  past  when  we  can  treat  the  menace 
lightly.  The  great  men  of  our  people  are  too  ab- 
sorbed in  their  pursuits.  The  country  offers  them 
too  many  opportunities  to  permit  them  to  stop  for 
any  serious  thought  of  the  socialistic  ranters.  We 
do  not  fear  anything  more  than  effects  upon  our  own 
kind.  But  Adullam's  Cave  is  a  rendezvous  for  all 
kinds  who  have  any  real  or  imagined  ailment  to  be 
cured.  Anything  that  promises  cure  will  secure  a 
large  following,  for  while  there  is  a  variety  of 
complaints  the  desire  for  a  physician  is  common  to 
them  all.  To  the  well,  none  are  sick.  To  the  loyal, 
none  are  traitors.  And  one  day,  when  all  are  happy 
and  it  is  a  gala  day,  there  is  a  terrific  explosion 
among  women  and  children  and  scores  are  killed  and 
maimed. 

When  the  carpenter  was  at  his  trade  and  the 
artisan  was  pursuing  quietly  and  contentedly  his  call- 
ing, a  fiend  in  some  infernal  cellar  or  attic  is  com- 
pounding his  fatal  explosive,  and  when  the  little 
children  are  being  dressed  for  the  pageant  and  are 
starting  from  home  with  gleeful  voices,  the  fiend, 
whose  heart  never  knew  pity,  is  loading  death  into 

18 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

his  crude  shell  and  placing  with  a  grin  of  satisfaction 
the  time  fuse.  It  is  an  unsuspecting  multitude. 
Why  should  they  be  suspicious?  They  know  that 
there  is  no  reason  or  remote  excuse  for  anyone  to 
harm  anyone  in  that  company,  much  less  the  women 
and  children.  The  mothers  and  children  of  the 
poor  are  there.  It  is  not  a  company  that  ever 
oppressed  any  people.  Their  fault  is  that  they  are 
happy  and  their  homes  are  clean  and  wholesome. 
The  men  have  a  day  off  from  their  work.  They 
are  workingmen — the  clerks  from  the  stores,  the 
mechanics  and  artisans,  the  young  women  from  the 
telephone  and  telegraph  offices.  The  wives  of  the 
industrious  released  from  care  have  a  day  off  with 
their  husbands  and  the  children.  To-morrow  they 
will  be  back  cheerfully  at  the  toil  that  makes  their 
happy  homes.  An  awful  blast!  Scores  of  those 
women  and  children  lie  dead  and  scores  have  limbs 
torn  off  and  eyes  extinguished,  and  that  gala  throng 
is  wailing  in  agony;  ranks  are  broken. 

The  whole  country  feels  the  tremor  of  that  worse 
than  earthquake  shock  for  a  'day — until  the  next 
day's  papers  spread  out  in  double  leaded  type  the 
next  sensation,  and  we  forget  what  was  done  to  the 
innocent  that  happy  morning;  and,  worse,  we  forget 
what  was  done  to  our  beautiful  land  and  country. 

We  leave  it  to  a  small  group  of  prosecutors  to 
bring  the  offenders  to  justice  and  make  it  difficult  for 
them  to  succeed,  invoking  the  national  administra- 
tion, mustering  preparations  of  sympathetic  strikes 

19 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  raising  volumes  of  questions  as  to  the  possibility 
of  wrong  convictions  in  the  face  of  all  available 
courts  and  executive  reviews. 

We  have  a  sure  way  in  our  land  of  making  it  com- 
paratively safe  for  this  fiendish  business.  If  we 
were  smaller,  it  would  shake  the  circumference  more 
quickly  and  more  mightily.  Before  the  victims  are 
buried,  soap  boxes  are  mounted  in  distant  cities  by 
apologetes  for  the  dastardly  murders.  It  did  not 
slack  our  pace.  But  in  the  cellar  and  the  attic  the 
fiends  are  working  with  black  curtains  drawn  to-day. 
Meetings  are  being  held  all  over  the  country  in  con- 
siderable cities  at  night  without  lights.  A  flash  of 
lightning,  if  the  shutters  were  not  closed,  would 
reveal  the  startling  company  of  a  thousand  malcon- 
tents, the  stuff  out  of  which  they  make  fiends,  who 
had  come  in  with  the  padded  tread  of  a  tiger.  And 
they  slink  away  to  their  lairs  with  the  poisonous 
infection  of  hate  without  cause,  to  be  wrought  upon 
they  care  not  whom  if  it  may  only  fill  hearts  with 
terror  and  tear  them  away  from  loyal  devotion  to 
the  country  whose  freedom  their  sires  bought  with 
their  priceless  blood. 

We  present  a  strange  spectacle  to  the  world. 
We  were  pioneers  of  freedom.  We  drove  the 
Indian  back  from  our  frontier  farms  because  of  his 
tomahawk  and  scalping  knife,  and  he  had  some 
justifiable  excuse  for  his  attempt  to  exterminate  the 
invaders  of  his  lands.  They  were  destroying  his 
hunting  grounds  and  damming  back  the  waters  of 

20 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

his  fishing  streams.  He  wanted  to  be  friendly,  a 
neighbor  on  common  terms.  We  -have  resisted  in- 
vading foes  and  shown  a  remarkable  strength  of 
self-defense.  We  have  had  no  difficulty  of  fighting 
our  foes  in  the  open.  It  is  passing  strange  that  we 
should  be  so  impotent  against  the  enemy  who  lurks 
in  darkness.  He  defies  us.  He  harangues  us  in 
our  streets  and  murders  us  in  our  patriotic  celebra- 
tions. Is  there  no  element  of  fear  restraining  us, 
no  patriotism  among  us?  The  homes  of  our  mayors 
are  torn  into  pieces  by  mysterious  explosions. 
Bombs  are  set  off  against  the  residences  of  judges. 
The  incendiary  torch  is  applied  to  our  stores  and 
factories. 

Should  our  methods  be  less  aggressive?  Shall 
we  be  charged  with  cowardice?  "What  are  we?" 
is  a  practical  question.  Why  do  these  marauders 
go  about  with  impunity?  Here  and  there  a  man 
and  a  woman,  so  notorious  as  to  compel  resistance  if 
a  modicum  of  self-respect  is  to  remain  to  us,  receive 
a  short  prison  sentence  and  plan  to  return  to  their 
old  stamping  ground.  There  is  a  spasm  in  a  Legis- 
lature and  an  appropriation  of  a  few  thousand 
dollars  to  put  down  foreign  Bolshevism — and  the 
wave  subsides.  There  will  be  a  report  of  a  junket- 
ing committee,  but  no  round-up  of  bomb-throwers. 
Secret  meetings  will  go  on  in  darkened  halls.  The 
secret  propaganda  will  flourish. 

Is  America  unable  to  protect  herself  from  her 
most  insidious  and  perilous  foes?  Are  we  without 

21 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

resources  of  protective  enginery?  Is  detective 
energy  a  past  art  and  name?  Are  we  to  be  beaten 
at  the  game  of  secretiveness?  These  are  questions 
that  relate  to  the  morals  and  safety  of  the  country. 

The  country  is  not  independent  and  free  while 
these  things  are  so.  We  make  a  boast  with  a  vic- 
torious foe  ambushed  in  all  of  our  precincts.  We 
are  not  protected  when  defiant  threats  are  made 
against  courts  which  condemn  criminals  and  business 
is  menaced  by  men  who  claim  the  right  of  force  to 
redress  their  fancied  wrongs  by  the  destruction  of 
property  or  by  the  death  of  the  builder  of  that 
property.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  furnish  shelter  and 
protection  to  the  persecuted  and  oppressed,  but  it  is 
equally  great  to  protect  ourselves,  our  business,  and 
our  homes.  We  may  as  well  reckon  that  this  is 
imposed  upon  us  as  a  first  obligation. 

Bombs,  lynchings,  and  incendiarism  do  not  belong 
to  advanced  civilization,  and  there  can  be  no  apology 
for  them.  They  belong  to  a  crude  and  undeveloped 
condition.  It  is  small  pride  to  point  to  our  vast 
territory  and  the  limitless  resources  of  mineral  and 
productive  wealth  of  our  mines,  our  prairies  and 
forests,  our  commerce  and  manufacture,  while  we 
are  threatened  and  terrorized  in  our  cities  and  towns 
by  a  raw  and  savage  element  which  we  can  neither 
control  nor  expel. 

The  strength  of  a  people  is  in  its  self-control  and 
in  the  mastery  of  all  opposing  elements.  The  force 
of  this  control  is  not  in  police  assertion,  an/  artificial 

22 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  hired  protection  which  itself  joins  the  foe,  but 
in  the  resident  energy  of  moral  •  endowment — a 
country  to  which  such  things  find  no  congenial  root, 
nor  the  possibility  of  secret  growth.  It  is  true  that 
the  same  soil  will  produce  weeds  and  corn,  but  which 
shall  grow  depends  upon  the  farmer.  It  is  not  a 
flattering  discovery  that  we  have  millions  of  adults 
among  us  who  can  neither  read  nor  write,  when  the 
condition  of  alien  citizenship  is  the  ability  to  read 
the  constitution  of  the  United  States.  We  have  dis- 
covered that  it  is  not  enough  that  tens  of  thousands 
communicate  with  each  other  and  with  those  of  their 
own  kith,  in  language  which  we  cannot  understand. 
They  must  know  an  interchanging  tongue  and 
language  by  which  they  shall  be  reached  by  the 
country.  They  must  have  a  language  with  which 
they  may  know  our -laws  and  our  history  as  well  as 
our  current  thought,  and  by  which  we  may  know 
them. 

The  greatest  source  of  our  peril  is  the  ignorance 
of  the  common  mind.  Upon  them  is  imposed  the 
wild  teaching  of  fanatics  and  the  self-seekers.  We 
do  not  forget  that  out  of  our  college  faculties  have 
come  some  of  the  most  dangerous  foes  of  America. 
They  have  learned  much,  but  they  have  never 
learned  that  freedom  and  restraint  go  hand  in  hand 
and  that  law  and  personal  liberty  are  not  in  conflict 
if  one  wishes  to  be  lawful.  Such  men,  however,  are 
not  especially  dangerous.  They  stand  out  and  are 
seen  and  known.  Some  of  them  are  in  Atlanta,  or 

23 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  verdict  of  the  university  is  pronounced  in  ex- 
pulsion from  its  faculties.  But  their  pernicious 
teachings  are  in  the  air  like  the  Scotch  thistle  down 
borne  into  all  countries.  The  ignorant  who  leave 
their  thinking  for  others,  and  who  take  their  posi- 
tions at  a  dangerous  premium  are  as  easy  victims  as 
the  fish  to  which  the  bait  floats  down  on  the  stream. 

It  is  told  that  a  transatlantic  ship  landed  Pat  at  a 
New  York  dock,  who  came  striding  down  the  gang- 
plank with  his  little  all  in  a  bandana-bound  bundle 
hanging  from  a  shilalah  over  his  shoulder.  The 
ever  ready  small  politician  representing  the  big  poli- 
tician received  him  with  cordial  welcome : 

"What  party  do  you  belong  to,  my  friend?" 

Pat  replied,  "Be  gorry,  I  don't  know,  but  I'm 
agin'  the  government." 

That  is  the  answer  of  the  overwhelming  ma- 
jorities who  land  on  our  shores  from  European 
monarchies,  where  from  childhood  they  have  been 
taught  that  the  ills  of  their  parents,  the  squalor  of 
their  apologies  of  homes,  the  scant  food  and  cloth- 
ing, the  difference  between  their  poverty  and  the 
nobilities'  riches  is  the  government,  and  that  when 
they  should  reach  this  Eldorado  they  would  them- 
selves be  able  to  overturn  the  government  and  make 
one  to  suit  poor  folks.  That  it  is  unlike  the  one 
they  have  left  is  unknown  to  them.  They  enroll  for 
their  novitiate  with  the  thought  that  they  are  to 
overthrow  something  and  set  up  a  better  something. 
Left  without  the  instruction  of  all  knowledge  except 

24 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  partisan  forum  of  the  crudest  form,  and  excited, 
as  has  been  too  true  in  past  generations,  by  the  argu- 
ments of  the  saloon,  you  have  the  dangerous  citizen. 
When  the  immigrant  comes  to  much  here  that  is 
promotive  of  the  highest  citizenship,  he  finds  among 
us  much  that  is  removed  from  that  calm  contentment 
that  argues  a  serene  and  confident  life.  We  are  a 
restless  people.  We  never  seem  to  have  reached 
a  goal.  We  are  in  a  state  of  constant  exploration 
and  venture. 

We  restlessly  change  from  one  form  of  business 
to  another,  and  have  for  a  common  center  in  which 
all  may  speculate,  exchange  of  stocks  and  bonds 
where  we  follow  up  and  down  the  shifting  scale  of 
prices.  While  it  is  true  that  much  among  us  is 
stable  and  fixed,  it  is  also  true  that  moving  in  all 
business  forms  is  a  restless  discontented  multitude. 
They  answer  you  with  examples  of  "get  rich  quick." 

That  they  pass  over  fortunes  at  their  feet  does 
not  change  the  nature  of  this  restless  animal.  His 
highly  wrought  nervous  energy  is  contagious.  He 
returns  to  view  lost  opportunities  and  plunges  on 
again.  He  makes  great  fortunes  and  so  do  those 
who  inherit  the  by-products  of  passing  enterprises. 
It  is  a  great  venture  to  launch  out,  but  it  takes 
courage  to  remain  and  seize  the  things  that  are 
left. 

In  a  Maine  lumbering  village  of  my  boyhood 
the  time  came  when  the  great  pines  had  yielded  to 
the  ax.  In  that  village  were  three  prominent  lum- 

25 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

bermen.  There  was  also  a  sturdy  Irishman  who 
drove  the  little  locomotive  that  hauled  the  lumber 
four  or  five  miles  to  the  seaport  from  which  it  was 
taken  to  Boston  and  New  York.  There  was  no 
more  promise  in  the  small  timber  of  spruce  and 
Norway  pine  that  remained.  The  three  men  sought 
their  fortunes  in  California  and  Oregon.  None  of 
them  greatly  increased  his  estate  in  the  new  voca- 
tion, though  all  were  men  of  large  ability  and  enter- 
prise. The  Irishman,  who  worked  at  monthly  wages 
and  had  saved  all  beyond  a  bare  living,  neither  strik- 
ing nor  drinking,  and  blessed  with  numerous  sons  and 
daughters,  bought,  at  a  very  low  price,  the  forsaken, 
worthless  land  which  promised  no  large  return  for 
investment  of  capital  and  labor,  as  fast  as  he  could 
pay  for  it.  He  ventured  to  borrow  some  as  his 
credit  increased.  He  soon  owned  the  mill  site.  De- 
mand sprang  up  for  spruce  and  Norway  pine. 
Small  white  pines  grew  rapidly  released  from  the 
lumberman's  ax.  The  contented  and  frugal  Irish- 
man lived  to  see  himself  worth  a  million  dollars,  a 
vast  fortune  in  those  days.  He  came  with  nothing 
but  his  hands.  He  could  have  bought  out,  when  he 
died,  several  times  over,  the  three  men  whom  he  had 
envied  in  his  young  manhood.  But  he  was  an  excep- 
tion. It  is  true  that  not  all  who  are  content  with 
the  old  life  are  so  successful  in  the  accumulation  of 
property.  The  greater  misfortune  that  the  restless 
spirit  is  not  often  content  within  spheres  of  enter- 
prises and  progress,  but  consumes  itself  in  envy  and 

26 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

accuses  fortune  and  the  order  of  things  with  being 
unfriendly.  It  apologizes  for  its  failure  by  charg- 
ing it  to  the  unjust  and  dishonest  competition  of  suc- 
cessful neighbors. 

Cornelius  Sullivan,  to  whom  I  have  referred, 
makes  no  impression  as  an  example.  He  is  an  excep- 
tion. There  is  no  law  proved,  you  say.  With  such 
answers  your  malcontent  goes  on  to  stimulate  his 
grievances.  And  if  merely  reaping  the  aftermath 
where  other  men  have  wrought  is  all  of  life,  disap- 
pointment would  not  be  surprising.  But  our  mal- 
content seems  to  have  no  objective.  Everything  is 
wrong.  Nothing  pays.  Everyone  is  in  better 
fortune,  and  there  is  nothing  for  him  but  to  know 
the  pain  of  his  own  heart.  He  is  made  unhappy  by 
the  happiness  of  others. 

The  great  trouble  is  that  such  men  have  not  made 
a  study  of  themselves.  It  is  a  problem.  There  are 
many  who  do  not  master  it,  and  many  more  who 
have  never  thought  of  it  as  a  problem.  They  think 
with  their  eyes  and  with  their  ears ;  and  having  eyes, 
they  see  not,  and  having  ears,  they  hear  not.  Hav- 
ing no  resources  within  themselves  they  turn  to  other 
men  who  have  what  they  covet,  and  having  no  solu- 
tion of  it,  it  never  occurs  to  them  to  improve  their 
own  estate  and  place  in  life.  But  the  shortest  and 
plainest  answer  to  it  all  is  to  blow  up  the  land  that 
fosters  partial  and  unequal  prosperity.  They  pass 
out  of  the  genera  of  men  and  become  beasts  to 
destroy  for  the  love  of  destroying.  The  law  is  a 

27 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

barrier  to  be  removed.  The  officers  restrain  by 
artificial  authority  and  are  enemies  of  mankind.  All 
restraining  government  should  be  overthrown,  not 
because  they  have  not  been  given  a  chance — they 
never  have  sought  one;  not  because  it  got  in  their 
way — they  never  sought  a  way.  They  want  only  to 
obstruct  everything  that  made  a  way,  an  open  way 
for  the  enterprises  of  men  who  while  seeking  their 
own  were  building  for  others.  It  is  a  strange  genus 
Homo.  He  stands  on  two  legs,  that  is  all.  If  he 
were  down  upon  four  legs,  we  could  recognize  him. 
We  would  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  he  was 
a  man — too  late. 

It  all  seems  a  species  of  insanity  and  yet  a  re- 
sponsible insanity.  But  it  is  impossible  to  predicate 
the  actions  of  such  people  upon  sanity.  Nothing 
could  be  more  useless  in  securing  the  end  attempted. 
The  world  never  has  yielded  the  slightest  return  to 
cowardly  murder.  There  is  nothing  that  appeals 
to  any  noble  instinct.  Darkness  does  not  create  light. 
It  must  be  dispelled  by  light  which  comes  into  it 
from  without.  Darkness  would  not  generate  light 
in  a  million  cycles.  Darkness  is  the  absence  of 
light.  Hate  does  not  beget  love.  They  are  at 
opposite  poles  in  everything.  They  have  no  re- 
semblance at  opposite  poles.  There  is  some  radical 
defect  which  seeks  destruction  instead  of  reform,  if 
even  reform  is  necessary.  The  mental  deficiency, 
the  utter  lack  of  mental  capacity,  suggests  the  home 
of  the  feeble-minded.  Never  a  reason  was  given 

28 


MY 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

by  a  destructive  lunatic  that  satisfied  the  astonished 
query  of  an  intelligent  man. 

If  the  whole  creation  of  these  murderous  fanatics 
and  cranks  were  in  an  instant  swept  off  the  earth, 
the  sum  total  would  not  amount  to  a  suggestion  of 
the  loss  of  a  man,  of  one  whole  and  sane  man. 
They  have  never  added  the  slightest  value  to  the 
world's  assets. 

In  the  earth's  structure  there  are  spots  that  seem 
to  serve  no  purpose  of  creation.  But  they  do  no 
harm,  and  sometimes  the  genius  of  man  turns  them 
to  account  and  they  prove  to  be  a  waiting  value  of 
the  earth's  varied  assets. 

The  destructive  socialist  serves  no  purpose.  He 
has  not  the  excuse  for  being  a  wild  animal  or  a 
venomous  scorpion.  He  is  a  blighted,  an  atrophied, 
a  distempered,  a  contagious  attempt  at  a  man,  the 
most  deplorable  and  disheartening  which  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  Along  some  dim  line  he  may  have 
been  a  man  once,  but  the  perversion  has  been  so  pro- 
longed and  persistent  that  all  resemblance  to  God's 
work  has  long  since  ceased.  He  killed  a  child.  He 
tore  in  pieces  a  baby  brought  by  its  mother  into  the 
sweet  morning  air.  He  set  a  torch  to  a  house,  a  home 
built  by  an  industrious  mechanic  and  his  frugal  wife. 
Through  years  they  were  building  it.  In  an  hour 
this  criminal  fiend  reduced  it  to  ashes  and  the  parents 
and  the  children  perished  in  their  home.  He  did 
it  to  reform  the  government !  Have  you  ever  seen 
anything  in  God's  work  like  him?  Have  you  seen 

29 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

anything  in  the  devil's  work  like  him — more  wicked 
— more  hellish  ?  He  is  not  my  neighbor.  He  is  not 
a  workingman.  There  is  nothing  in  him  of  which 
workingmen  are  made.  He  cannot  appeal  to  me. 
If  he  suffers,  I  do  not  suffer.  No !  Not  any  more 
than  I  suffer  when  the  wolf  that  destroyed  my  child 
suffers  and  is  dying  from  the  hunter's  bullet.  Such 
anarchistic  and  destructive  socialists  are  justly  de- 
scribed in  words  once  used  by  the  world's  greatest 
Teacher,  when  he  sentenced  as  "serpents  and  a  gen- 
eration of  vipers"  characters  who  could  not  escape 
the  damnation  of  hell. 

And  such  are  to  reform  my  government  by  blow- 
ing into  fragments  its  industries,  by  killing  the  inno- 
cent who  live  under  it,  by  surprising  with  eternity 
those  whose  fate  is  not  committed  to  them,  but  who 
have  the  supreme  right  to  live?  If  they  reach  num- 
bers to  have  a  name  like  the  Bolsheviki  and  pretend 
to  a  government,  they  will  order  instant  trial  execu- 
tions— a  criminal  farce.  They  are  I.  W.  W. 
murderers  and  cowardly  assassins.  They  are  in  any 
form  our  foes  to  be  exterminated.  These  reform- 
ers elected  an  addled-brained  dupe  to  kill  a  McKin- 
ley,  and  excited  with  their  crazy  doctrines  a  dementia 
victim  to  slay  a  Clemenceau  if  possible. 

Has  there  been  any  pronounced  friend  of  hu- 
manity who  has  not  been  classed  as  their  enemy? 
Has  there  been  any  form  of  human  or  divine  gov- 
ernment that  is  not  the  object  of  their  wrath?  It 
matters  not  whether  it  be  an  absolute  monarchy  or 

30 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  world's  most  generous  and  most  democratic 
republic.  Alike  they  curse  the  land  of  lese  majeste 
and  the  land  of  free  speech,  in  which  they  sow  sedi- 
tion and  curse  its  generous  institutions. 

The  further  one  reflects,  the  warmer  becomes  his 
blood  and  the  hotter  his  indignation  that  such  fiends 
should  presume  to  pass  judgment  upon  the  rule  and 
authority  of  man.  That  there  is  lacking  every 
qualifying  element  is  apparent  from  the  red  socialist 
to  the  Bolsheviki  who  have  intimated  no  constructive 
powers.  When  for  an  hour  they  have  held  sway, 
progress,  manufacture,  the  arts,  learning  and  virtue 
have  fled  in  terror  from  them,  and  their  own  doc- 
trines and  diabolical  practices  have  subdued  them 
and  overcome  them.  How  long  will  the  lethargy  of 
conceit,  the  flattery  of  a  false  security,  drug  us  into 
perilous  soporific  indifference  from  which  we  may 
wake  up  too  late? 

What  are  the  riots  of  the  whites  and  blacks  in 
our  great  cities  but  symptoms  of  propaganda  in 
secret  and  earnest  operation  throughout  the  land? 
These  destroyers  of  our  peace  are  upon  the  alert 
to  stir  the  discontented  who  find  their  place  in  the 
body  politic  for  any  reason  irksome  or  embar- 
rassed. 

The  colored  man  is  docile  and  peaceable.  But 
he  is  coming  to  acquire  some  measure  of  power,  in 
saved  wage,  in  modest  home,  in  small  farms  and 
trades.  His  children  are  educated.  He  is  entering 
professions  among  his  own  people.  The  world 

31 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

never  has  seen  such  an  emergence  from  bondage. 
But  a  class  of  them  is  easily  excited. 

There  are  also  workingmen  loyal  and  safely  in- 
trusted with  the  community.  They  are  partners 
in  all  of  the  progress  of  their  town,  the  public 
schools,  the  libraries,  the  Christian  and  Jewish  As- 
sociation, and  the  most  of  them  are  in  the  churches 
and  synagogues.  They  are  the  stability  and  hope 
of  the  country. 

These  people  have  a  right  to  protection  from  the 
secret  machinations  of  the  destroyer  that  works  in 
darkness.  They  can  be  made  the  greatest  protec- 
tive force  of  the  country.  They  respond  as  one 
voice.  They  are  a  common  and  forceful  sentiment. 
They  have  an  investment  in  all  that  their  town  is, 
and  a  blow  at  it  is  a  blow  at  them  and  their  families. 
They  will  not  listen  to  any  doctrine  of  common 
property,  soviet  government,  confiscated  factories, 
common  wives.  They  are  clean.  They  have  helped 
to  rid  the  country  of  the  saloon,  the  workingman's 
worst  enemy.  They  furnish  from  their  homes  the 
students  of  the  colleges.  From  them  have  gone  out 
to  the  professions  many  of  the  ablest  men  in  law  and 
medicine,  statesmanship,  great  business  men  and 
scholars  of  literature,  the  arts  and  sciences. 

The  homes  of  the  poor  are  the  fruitful  soil  of  the 
best  citizens  of  any  community.  As  a  rule,  in  what- 
ever lot  they  are  they  are  contented,  for  they  em- 
body the  element  of  the  true  contentment,  and  they 
make  the  world's  earnest  progress.  They  are  the 

32 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

chief  asset  of  any  community.  Whatever  business 
comes,  it  fails  if  they  do  not  come  and  if  they  are  not 
contented. 

These  workingmen  are  our  neighbors.  They 
are  the  neighbors  and  helpers  of  every  man  who 
carries  large  enterprises.  We  need  not  fear  with 
such  men  as  our  neighbors.  They  are  our  safety. 


33 


CHAPTER  II 
WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

THAT  has  been  the  unanswered  question  in  many 
lands  for  many  years.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  a  war 
of  extermination  should  be  begun.  That  is  the  way 
we  proceed  against  outlaws.  The  claims  of  our 
country  set  aside  all  considerations  for  its  foes  and 
especially  for  those  who  assail  her  in  the  dark  and  by 
inhuman  means — a  fixed  and  alert  watchfulness  of 
all  signs,  the  tracing  of  every  track  of  the  beast  to 
his  lair.  Such  men  live  in  unusual  places  and  the 
manner  of  their  lives  is  marked.  They  are  unem- 
ployed if  they  are  leaders  and  chief  conspirators. 
They  should  be  arrested  upon  suspicion  and  the 
burden  of  their  defense  should  be  placed  upon  them. 
There  should  be  no  safe  and  secure  place  left  to 
them.  Wild  animals  are  not  hunted  among  flocks 
and  herds.  They  are  hunted  in  the  retreats  where 
they  bange.  It  will  be  conceded  that  if  the  ex- 
termination has  not  succeeded  in  those  lands  where 
every  effort  has  been  used  and  where  there  has  been 
no  embarrassment  from  the  plea  of  freedom  of 
speech  and  of  personal  pursuits,  but  the  work  of 
assassination  has  gone  on  in  the  daylight,  it  is  not 
an  easy  task  in  a  land  where  the  courts  presume 
innocence  until  guilt  is  proved-  But  there  must  be  a 

34 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

suspension  of  the  order  of  things  among  us  and 
theories  of  practice  that  apply  in  common  cases  must 
be  laid  aside.  A  special  police  for  this  purpose 
must  be  assigned  and  held  strictly  to  the  business  of 
hunting  down  this  class  of  criminals.  Meetings  in 
darkened  halls,  unannounced,  are  prima  facie  evi- 
dence of  mischief.  They  choose  darkness  because 
their  deeds  are  evil.  The  light  should  be  sprung 
upon  them.  It  may  be  truthfully  said  that  evils 
might  follow  such  procedure,  but  in  dealing  with 
this  peril  such  chances  must  be  taken.  The  national 
assassin  must  not  hide  under  a  prudence  more  care- 
ful of  him  than  of  his  intended  victim.  There  has 
been  too  much  measuring  of  the  constitutional  limit 
of  privilege.  The  author  of  incendiary  speeches 
has  been  protected  by  the  Constitution  he  seeks  to 
destroy. 

In  a  certain  city  a  foul,  anarchistic  woman,  in  an 
incendiary  speech  to  an  audience  of  brutal  men  and 
women,  attacked  the  head  of  the  university  of  the 
town.  She  regretted  that  she  could  not  "kill  him 
and  take  his  worthless  hide  and  make  it  into  drum- 
heads to  beat  out  the  march  of  human  freedom  in 
its  processions. "  No  arrest  was  attempted.  No 
caution  by  representatives  of  the  law  who  were  pres- 
ent. The  morning  papers  did  not  condemn  it,  prob- 
ably considering  it  too  coarse  to  be  noticed  and  to  be 
harmful.  That  is  not  a  safe  conclusion.  It  is  from 
such  meetings,  inspired  by  such  vile  and  coarse 
ranters,  that  some  diseased  brain  goes  out  deter- 

35 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

mined  to  serve  the  cause  by  bringing  in  that  hide  to 
be  made  into  drumheads.  In  the  abstract  such  agi- 
tators are  harmless  and  best  not  be  dignified  by 
marked  attention,  but  there  is  a  concrete  and  prac- 
tical side  to  it.  The  country  would  be  startled  if  it 
knew  the  per  cent  of  insane  who  are  outside  of  the 
asylums.  They  strangely  gravitate  to  such  com- 
pany. They  become  dangerous.  They  do  the  deed 
which  the  soap-box  orators,  the  bomb-makers,  dare 
not  do.  There  is  but  one  course  that  should  be 
pursued  with  such  irresponsible  creatures.  They 
should  be  put  inside  of  the  insane  asylums  or  the 
prisons  for  the  insane.  That  woman  has  just  com- 
pleted too  short  a  term  at  Atlanta  for  another 
offense,  but  the  work  of  justice  was  too  slow.  It 
should  be  alert  when  the  attempt  now  boasted  is 
made  to  renew  the  old  practices  and  especially  when 
a  demonstration  of  welcome  is  made  which  would  be 
a  plain  defiance  of  the  law. 

We  cannot  afford  to  wink  at  these  practices.  We 
are  becoming  too  dense  in  population,  our  cities  are 
covered  with  the  rotting  scum  that  is  floating  into 
them  on  every  tide  of  immigration  from  Russia  and 
Neapolitan  Europe.  They  threaten  us  far  more 
than  defective  sewerage  or  lax  laws  against  virulent 
contagion. 

We  systematize  the  protection  of  health.  We 
leave  unguarded  against  the  assassin  of  our  free  in- 
stitutions and  men  who  represent  them,  every 
avenue  of  approach.  A  President  is  killed;  a  judge 

36 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

shot  on  the  bench.  A  mayor  or  a  governor  is 
threatened  for  executing  law.  We  utter  our  in- 
dignant protests  and  wait  for  the  repetition  of  the 
offense.  The  threat  should  be  the  capital  crime 
against  which  we  should  aim  the  shafts  of  the  law. 
The  bloody  act  should  not  hide  under  the  delays  of 
the  court  or  dallying  officials. 

So  long  as  we  make  a  home  for  scorpions,  they  will 
crawl  into  the  place  where  they  are  left  unmolested, 
and  not  strange  if  they  crawl  about  the  house.  If 
we  are  indifferent  to  their  coming  and  going,  they 
will  come  and  go  at  pleasure  and  we  have  the  chief 
blame  for  their  virus  and  its  fatal  contact.  It  is  an 
impotent  nation  that  cannot  rid  itself  of  lurking  peril 
which  takes  so  little  pains  to  hide  itself. 

Now  that  the  war  is  over,  when  the  propagandists 
begin  their  work  is  time  for  warfare  at  home.  We 
have  fought  no  foe  more  worthy  of  extermination. 
The  inventive  genius  that  secured  such  remarkable 
instruments  to  the  cause  of  humanity  against  the 
tyranny  that  sought  to  overthrow  all  human  free- 
dom should  find  it  no  difficult  task  to  rid  our  part 
of  the  world  of  the  insane  freaks  who  attack  the 
foundations  of  freedom  among  us.  Such  assault  is 
friendly  to  no  interest.  The  tax  of  extermination 
will  be  begrudged  by  no  class,  but  we  will  insist 
that  the  work  be  done  thoroughly.  It  must  justify 
itself  by  leaving  no  vestige  of  the  pestilence. 

As  a  precaution  we  must  guard  our  open  doors. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  leaving  the  doors  too  wide 

37 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

open  and  leaving  them  to  be  swung  on  their  own 
hinges  automatically.  We  have  been  too  careless 
of  our  doors.  For  generations  we  had  no  restric- 
tions. The  immigrants  poured  in  upon  us  and  they 
served  us  right  well.  The  disease  of  anarchy  was 
unknown.  The  revolutionists  who  came  brought  no 
bombs  nor  daggers  with  them.  They  came  for 
freedom  with  the  spirit  of  the  pilgrims.  Their  sons 
and  daughters  have  reenforced  a  sturdy  citizenship. 
They  increase  in  efficiency  with  each  generation. 
The  fear  that  we  might  suffer  serious  loss  to  the 
country  by  interfering  with  these  wholesome  cur- 
rents of  immigration  has  kept  our  doors  open.  A 
while  ago,  when  southern  Europe  began  to  send 
over  her  cripples  and  incompetents,  we  placed  a 
guard  at  our  doors.  We  were  less  careful  about 
the  opinions  of  men  seeking  our  shores,  for  we  had 
arranged  all  of  that  in  the  arena  of  free  thought. 
We  trusted  to  the  freedom  of  thinking  and  sound 
speaking  to  assimilate  diverging  and  antagonizing 
opinions.  That  men  should  try  to  destroy  collec- 
tively the  lives  of  those  who  did  not  agree  with 
them,  and  to  overturn  the  government  was  new  to 
us.  And  that  those  who  came  to  the  privileges  of 
our  institutions,  established  at  enormous  expense 
and  sacrifice  and  defended  with  our  lives,  must  be 
only  sporadic.  It  could  not  mean  a  large  menace 
in  fact  or  force.  It  would  correct  itself;  it  was  an 
exaggerated  protest  of  fanaticism. 

The  time  has  come  to  double  guard  the  doors. 

38 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

Cripples  might  come  with  promise  of  genius.  We 
might  exclude  a  Byron.  Many  of  the  world's  great 
thinkers  have  been  deformed  physically.  What  of 
the  man's  brain?  What  is  the  type  of  his  thinking, 
what  the  school  of  his  instruction,  what  his  bias? 
Americans  should  guard  that  door  and  bar  it  against 
every  man  whose  mind  is  deformed  or  who  shows 
destructive  tendencies.  Let  the  nation  that  pro- 
duced him  be  responsible  for  him.  Return  him 
whence  he  came.  If  anyone  with  these  dangerous 
symptoms  is  admitted,  it  should  be  with  a  safe  check 
upon  him.  He  should  be  listed  and  followed  care- 
fully through  a  process  of  inspection  when  not  under 
restraint  and  unconscious  that  he  is  being  observed. 
Those  who  have  got  by  should  be  deported 
promptly.  The  first  soap-box  speech  against  the 
country,  the  first  threat  in  darkened  meetings, 
should  list  the  offender  for  an  early  sailing  ship. 
Clear  evidence  of  such  utterances  should  be  suffi- 
cient for  any  magistrate  to  make  the  deporting 
commitment. 

Highly  intelligent  detectives  should  be  sent  to 
the  embarking  ports  of  Europe  to  acquaint  them- 
selves with  the  Trotskys  and  Lenines  in  embryo,  and 
follow  them  here  by  the  ships  on  which  they  sail  and 
stop  them  at  the  open  doors.  It  should  shut  with 
double  boltings  in  the  face  of  all  such.  It  is  not 
enough  to  protect  ourselves  on  these  shores ;  we 
should  know  Europe  as  familiarly  as  we  know 
America. 

39 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

We  are  not  planning  against  another  great 
European  war.  We  need  infinitely  more  than  a 
League  of  Nations,  a  league  of  self-preservation  at 
the  doors  of  our  seacoasts  against  a  foe  more 
dangerous  than  Kaiserism.  We  are  not  in  danger 
from  an  invading  army  by  sea  or  with  bombing  air- 
planes. We  must  guard  against  the  planting  of  an 
army  of  Bolsheviki,  by  whatever  name,  to  attack  us 
secretly  by  cowardly  assassination.  Germany  boasts 
preparations  for  another  war.  She  will  not  make 
her  attempts  by  millions  marshaled  in  battle  ranks. 
She  is  putting  through  our  open  and  unguarded 
doors  on  the  east  and  west  coasts  her  next  army. 

It  is  not  the  wooden  horse  of  Troy.  It  is  the 
steerage  of  the  transatlantic  lines  and  the  callous 
conceits  of  our  over-confident  America.  They  come 
because  a  certain  large  measure  of  preparative  work 
has  been  done  while  we  have  been  sleeping.  They 
do  not  count  yet  by  millions,  but  they  are  every- 
where. They  take  the  measure  of  capital  and  labor. 
They  weigh  the  politicians.  They  champion  Czech 
and  Russian.  They  reject  the  Jew.  He  is  the  son  of 
Abraham  and  a  student  of  Moses's  law.  He  is 
deep-rooted,  as  a  rule,  in  the  law  and  order  of  his 
fathers. 

The  respectable  class,  however  much  misguided, 
who  offer  their  opinions  in  an  orderly  canvass  with 
published  candidates  for  the  franchise,  are  exercis- 
ing the  rights  of  free  Americans.  They  are  voters 
and  have  a  right  to  influence  others  to  vote  with 

40 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

them.  The  country  will  trust  to  the  intelligence  of 
the  loyal  American  to  resist  their  fallacies  and  to 
defeat  them  with  the  convincing  argument  of  the 
ballot.  Should  they  by  any  chance  win,  the  damage 
wrought  by  their  crude  experiment  will  return  the 
community  sobered  to  the  primal  principles  tested  by 
a  century  and  a  half  of  freedom.  A  long  memory  is 
not  required  to  recall  the  political  spasms  of  anti- 
masonry,  greenbackism,  and  free  silver,  all  en- 
tombed by  the  intelligence  of  the  people  after  a 
premature  birth  and  death  by  infantile  paralysis. 
A  square,  open  fight  in  the  light  is  not  to  be  feared 
in  this  country.  It  may  be  inconvenient.  It  may 
work  serious  loss  and  disturb  the  good  order  of 
society.  It  may  defeat,  for  a  time,  men  of  solid 
worth  and  reduce  our  administration  and  judiciary 
to  a  travesty,  but  the  turbulent  waters  return  to 
their  banks,  the  shores  are  mended,  and  the  normal 
currents  flow  on  again. 

Capital  returns  to  its  place  once  more  and  fur- 
nishes employment  in  the  thousand  enterprises  which 
it  offers  to  the  world's  enterprise,  and  the  working- 
man  fills  his  dinner  pail  with  something  more  sub- 
stantial than  the  socialistic  orator's  hot  air.  These 
convulsions  are  not  to  be  classed  with  Bolshevism, 
the  I.  W.  W.,  and  the  Red  Socialists  who  demand 
the  destruction  of  the  general  order  with  no  intel- 
ligent substitute.  We  can  tolerate  the  man  who 
thinks  he  has  something  of  improvement — a  better 
thing,  however  foolish  it  appears  when  intelligently 

41 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

analyzed  and  however  much  we  may  deprecate  the 
temporary  calamity  that  must  follow  the  experi- 
ment. But  at  the  worst  he  is  a  mistaken  citizen,  and 
he  is  our  neighbor  even  though  we  do  not  fellow- 
ship his  politics.  Such  men  suggest  a  practical  prob- 
lem. We  have  encouraging  work  with  him  and 
more  with  those  who  follow  in  years.  The  informal 
school,  the  night  school  in  college  halls,  in  high- 
school  and  grammar-school  buildings,  in  profes- 
sional school  lecture  rooms  where  good  plain  teach- 
ings may  be  given  by  college  professors  and  public 
school  teachers,  where  the  phonograph  and  movie 
may  be  used  and  lectures  and  concerts  may  be  given, 
all  of  it  free,  furnished  by  the  state  and  the  general 
government.  Science  may  be  taught  in  its  plain  but 
fundamental  outlines,  especially  as  it  relates  to 
human  progress  and  happiness.  History  should  be 
in  the  schedule :  those  great  events  and  experiments 
in  human  affairs  that,  if  learned,  will  save  the  world 
the  repetition  of  past  fatal  blunders;  history  that  is 
more  than  annals  of  political  intrigue  and  the  shift- 
ing of  rulers  in  the  world's  game  of  chess.  The 
plain,  everyday  events  of  the  common  life :  the  birth 
of  new  nations,  the  development  of  industries,  the 
personal  and  individual  achievements  in  navigation, 
in  railways,  in  talking  cables,  and  telegraphs  and 
telephones;  the  numberless  inventors  who  have 
established  a  new  order  of  home  life,  whence  they 
came,  by  what  personal  heroism,  by  what  sacrifice  of 
capital,  by  what  tireless  toil  and  labor  both  of  the 

42 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

working  brain  and  the  working  hand;  the  discov- 
eries, the  subduing  of  waste  places,  the  building  of 
cities;  the  story  of  our  own  land  and  country,  the 
heroism  of  its  founders,  the  prescient  wisdom  of  its 
first  lawmakers,  the  story  of  the  Constitution,  its 
system  of  jurisprudence,  its  public  schools,  the 
patrons  of  education,  the  origin  of  charities,  and  an- 
nuities which  minister  to  the  unfortunate  and  the 
poor.  Let  all  such  students  be  taught  the  English 
language,  that  polyglot  of  all  tongues,  until  they 
can  read  and  study  every  great  life  of  our  history 
and  every  translation  of  the  lives  of  all  lands,  that 
they  may  live  among  the  great  men  of  human 
history.  With  the  doors  of  their  brains  opened, 
there  will  come  in  a  new  light  and  our  restless  citi- 
zens will  live  in  a  new  world  of  thought. 

Natural  History  has  a  wonderful  revelation  for 
them.  Natural  law  will  banish  superstition  and 
fear  and  create  for  them  realms  of  which  they  have 
never  dreamed,  when  once  they  become  capable  of 
interpreting  it.  There  is  no  remedy  like  widening 
the  fields  of  thought  by  knowledge  of  the  purposes 
and  achievements  of  thoughtful,  earnest  men. 
There  is  mischief  for  idle  hands  to  do.  There  is 
greater  for  idle  brains  to  do.  They  react  upon 
themselves.  They  become  the  bare  branches  in 
which  foul  harpies  perch.  To  awaken  them,  to 
fill  them  with  engrossing  and  inspiring  facts  and 
quicken  them  with  worthy  ambition  is  the  best  cure 
for  evil  and  vicious  men.  The  safety  of  the  country 

43 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

demands  another  grade  of  common  school  related 
to  the  rescue  of  the  perilous.  The  economy  is  in 
substituting  such  schools  for  the  reformatory.  They 
are  for  those  who  missed  the  public  schools  also. 

The  mistake  should  not  be  in  shutting  up  such 
work  in  the  State  colleges  and  normal  schools.  The 
public  school  buildings  should  be  equipped  with  what 
they  lack,  all  colleges  and  technical  schools  should 
be  used  under  the  supervision  of  the  Department  of 
Education,  both  national  and  State,  men  and  women 
of  liberal  endowment  of  common  sense  and  a  pas- 
sion to  help  the  ingenious  minds  that  feel  the  first 
pangs  of  hunger  for  knowledge.  Care  should  be 
taken  to  select  teachers  with  reverence  and  un- 
doubted loyalty  to  their  country,  faith  in  the  good 
and  confidence  that  it  will  prevail. 

Theorists,  faddists,  and  fools  in  general  should 
be  taboo.  Young  minds,  all  students  feel  the  force 
of  personality,  with  an  attractive  force  that  will  soon 
penetrate  the  passions.  Such  schools  will  need  no 
persuasions  nor  enforced  attendance. 

The  late  Dr.  Bickmore,  the  founder  of  the 
Museum  of  Natural  History  in  New  York,  began 
to  illustrate  his  subjects  to  a  small  group  in  a  room 
about  fifteen  feet  square  on  one  of  the  floors  of  that 
great  institution  in  the  days  of  its  beginning.  In  a 
comparatively  short  time  a  large  hall  was  crowded 
with  eager  throngs  following  his  colored  photo- 
graphs through  the  wonderful  fields  of  those  fas- 
cinating studies.  The  day  that  I  was  invited  to  at- 

44 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

tend  one  of  his  lectures,  the  first  subject  on  the  screen 
was  a  desert,  with  its  struggling  attempt  at  a  palm 
shrub,  in  the  sands  of  which  was  hollowed  a  nest  of 
the  ostrich.  Near  by  stood  the  adult  bird  and  close 
by  the  broken  and  suggestive  shell  was  the  young- 
ster. The  habitat  of  the  ostrich,  in  colors  of  sand 
and  shrub  and  plumage  of  this  bird  of  the  desert, 
made  an  attractive  and  instructive  picture.  It  did 
not  pass  as  a  picture  to  be  forgotten.  It  means 
inquiry  and  the  rudiments  of  research.  It  was  a 
travel  picture  that  took  those  men  and  women  into 
a  far  country  of  which  they  had  scarcely  heard. 
Could  there  be  anything  better  as  a  preventive  of 
gangsters  and  bomb-makers?  One  incendiary  fire 
prevented  would  pay  for  the  equipment. 

Out  of  the  fetid  air,  the  profane  vulgarity,  the 
gas-house  lot  and  sewer  odors,  into  an  hour  of 
oxygen  of  self-respect,  the  revelations  of  an  unheard 
of  world  is  a  saving  religion  against  which  no  sane 
person  can  raise  a  protest  of  jealousy  and  bigotry. 
A  decade  will  change  the  features  of  that  part  of  the 
community.  It  will  change  the  homes  and  put  into 
the  air  new  odors.  The  skilled  artisan  will  be 
sought  there  by  the  manufacturer,  and  the  young 
clerk  of  the  store  will  come  and  go  on  those  clean 
and  sweet  streets.  It  is  the  cities'  new  investment. 
It  has  its  place  with  the  parks  and  art  museums.  It 
justifies  them,  for  it  is  educating  appreciation  of 
them  among  the  lowly  and  forgotten  who  will  be- 
come vicious  if  neglected  much  longer. 

45 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

It  is  well  to  improve  tenement  houses  and  widen 
streets  and  clean  up  the  districts  of  squalor.  That 
is  for  those  who  will  come  to  enjoy  it  all  and  pay  the 
investment.  Our  suggestion  is  not  with  the  tene- 
ment but  with  the  tenant,  not  with  the  street  but 
with  the  man.  The  new  man  is  more  important 
than  the  new  tenement.  The  wiser  man  and  woman, 
the  brighter  children  are  more  important  than  the 
wider  street.  Conditions  of  squalor  are  not  made 
by  poverty.  They  are  made  by  ignorance.  It  is 
also  the  seed  of  vicious  habits. 

The  woman  should  be  taught  at  odd  times 
domestic  life.  The  husband's  wholesome  meal,  well 
cooked  if  coarse,  palatable  if  bought  from  the 
cheap  huckster's  cart,  is  an  element  of  contentment 
and  contributes  to  sound  citizenship.  Unfortunate 
women!  They  bear  children  in  unfortunate  num- 
bers and  do  not  know  how  to  feed  them  and  save 
their  lives.  In  our  new  and  universal  schools,  now 
being  experimented  in  some  cities,  there  are  schools 
of  cookery;  some  newspapers  have  short  courses; 
some  Young  Women's  Associations  have  them. 
They  are  for  first-hand  work.  They  make  new 
homes.  A  strange  contentment  conies  over  the 
husband.  He  discovers  a  new  wife  at  home.  He 
brings  home  a  new  voice.  He  doesn't  leave  his 
excuse  for  a  home  with  a  curse  to  saunter  up  town. 
He  waits  until  the  dishes  are  washed  and  takes  the 
wife  in  her  new  dress  which  she  learned  to  make  at 
the  home  school. 

46 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

So  strong  is  the  appeal,  so  rich  the  reward  in 
good  citizenship,  that  some  colleges  are  founding 
schools  of  domestic  science  where  young  women 
by  hundreds  are  studying  to  lead  in  the  first-hand 
work  of  home  instruction  in  cooking  wholesome 
meals  and  in  dressmaking  for  the  mother  and  for 
the  children. 

These  are  some  of  the  things  we  can  do  to  make 
neighbors  of  our  enemies  who  are  enemies  of  man- 
kind. It  is  a  work  more  important  than  the  educa- 
tion of  the  children,  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the 
rich  who  should  not  and  who  will  not  be  neglected. 
It  is  a  protective  measure.  Not  that  all  poor  and 
ignorant  become  vicious — far  from  it.  The  rich 
furnish  their  quota  of  spoiled  indulgents.  But  it  is 
perilous  to  leave  the  poor  to  brood  over  their  condi- 
tion and  to  teach  their  children  that  the  state  is  re- 
sponsible for  it.  The  state  cannot  relieve  the  situa- 
tion by  direct  appropriation.  It  is  not  to  bring 
something  to  the  man  in  dollars  and  cents,  it  is  to 
bring  something  into  him — a  larger  and  better 
brain — something  he  can  do  himself.  That  is  what 
elevates  him.  Mr.  Carnegie  had  given  a  large  sum 
for  a  university  library.  A  German  with  socialist 
tendencies  said,  "Why  did  not  Mr.  Carnegie  give 
the  money  to  the  poor?" 

The  reply  was:  uThat  is  an  old  question  by  an 
unenviable  character;  but  has  not  Mr.  Carnegie 
given  his  money  to  the  poor?  You  are  a  subcon- 
tractor on  the  building;  are  you  a  rich  man?  Are 

47 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

any  of  these  men  rich?  Are  not  these  scores  of 
workingmen — the  hodcarriers,  the  stonecutters  and 
masons,  the  bricklayers,  and  carpenters  and  painters 
— are  they  not  all  poor  men?" 

The  answer  was  in  the  affirmative. 

"Well,  could  he  have  given  them  this  large  sum  of 
money  in  a  better  way?  Is  it  not  a  way  that  pre- 
serves their  self-respect?  They  are  contributing 
for  what  they  get." 

Men  are  elevated  in  this  world  by  using  their 
own  energy  and  applying  their  own  time.  If  by 
some  process  our  unlearned  and  ignorant  men  could 
have  knowledge  put  into  their  brains  as  sunlight  is 
poured  into  the  rose  petals,  they  would  be  scarcely 
above  vegetables.  The  tree  takes  the  rains  that  fall 
about  it  and  pumps  it  and  transmits  it  along  its 
branches  and  out  to  its  twigs.  And  it  blooms  and 
bears  fruit.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  first 
divine  office  of  labor,  it  is  not  now  a  curse;  it  is  a 
blessing.  It  is  not  benefactions  of  pensions,  it  is 
not  stipends  that  the  unplaced  and  unfortunate  need. 
It  is  opportunity;  the  privilege  of  the  reach  of  know- 
ing things,  just  so  much  as  to  help  them  to  know 
more.  Then  the  character  begins  to  sprout.  The 
purpose  is  not  that  of  a  pensioner,  a  dependent.  He 
has  become  a  subscriber  for  his  paper;  a  popular 
science  magazine  is  on  his  table.  He  learned  at  the 
night  school  enough  English  to  read  them.  A  dic- 
tionary is  beside  him.  Like  Dwight  L.  Moody,  he 
is  not  ashamed  to  spell  out  hard  words.  Henceforth 

48 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

he  does  not  go  to  the  polls  to  sell  his  vote.     It  is 
not  for  sale,  for  he  is  not  for  sale.   • 

The  newcomer  into  the  country,  without  knowl- 
edge of  our  language  and  the  common  English 
branches,  should  be  directed  to  these  schools  of 
privilege.  They  are  not  penal  schools.  They  bear 
no  mark  or  sign  or  thought  of  that  kind.  They  are 
not  reformatory,  but  they  have  a  mighty  saving  in- 
fluence. They  are  offered  to  help  those  who  for 
some  one  or  another  reason  failed  to  secure  their 
elemental  preparation  for  a  most  useful  life.  They 
are  to  help  men  and  women  to  acquaintance  with  the 
past  and  with  current  events  and  to  practical  affairs, 
all  of  which  will  increase  their  efficiency  and  their 
incomes  and  make  it  possible  for  them  to  advance 
their  positions  which  others  have  taken  from  them 
because  they  knew  a  little  more — just  what  they 
learned  in  the  night  or  vacation  school.  The 
stranger  who  comes  to  our  shores  may  not  lack  the 
knowledge  which  will  fit  him  for  self-support  and 
put  him  beyond  charge  to  our  country,  but  he  may 
and  often  does  have  the  dangerous  notion  that  he 
is  to  make  over  the  state  of  things  to  which  he  finds 
it  impossible  to  adjust  himself  because  of  his  ignor- 
ance. He  broods  distempers  and  creates  unrest  in 
those  like  himself.  Such  a  man  must  be  compelled 
to  study  our  language  and  to  know  sketches  of  our 
history.  It  is  light  that  he  needs,  and  not  fire.  He 
must  be  made  to  apply  his  idly  vicious  hours  to 
knowledge  of  what  has  made  us  great.  He  must 

49 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

have  English,  that  he  may  read  our  great  peri- 
odicals. If  he  intends  to  live  here,  whether  he 
wants  to  become  a  citizen  or  not,  he  must  be  com- 
pelled to  read  our  Constitution  and  our  Declaration 
of  Independence,  the  beatitudes  of  Christ,  the  Ten 
Commandments  of  Moses,  the  lives  of  the  founders 
of  our  republic.  And  if  at  the  end  of  two  years  he 
does  not  qualify  in  these,  he  should  be  deported. 
This  is  friendship  to  the  poor,  ignorant,  misguided 
fellow  whose  life  holds  no  promise.  It  is  due  our- 
selves, who  are  in  imminent  peril  of  becoming  his 
victims.  We  are  taking  away  no  liberty.  We  are 
using  no  oppression.  We  are  doing  no  injustice. 
We  are  conferring  an  immense  benefit,  greater  than 
any  moneyed  gain  he  might  find  here.  We  are  do- 
ing for  him  what  was  not  done  in  the  land  from 
which  he  came.  We  are  adding  to  the  wealth  of 
our  own  country,  for  we  are  making  from  very  crude 
and  unpromising  material  a  neighbor. 

Our  work  is  twofold — to  guard  our  shore  doors 
against  the  hopeless  vicious  and  make  the  man  who 
is  made  by  immigration  or  birth  an  American,  a 
whole  and  sound  and  nothing-else  American. 

In  this  hour  we  have  a  home  duty  of  American- 
ism which  is  in  danger  of  being  passed  over  in  a 
sentimental  appeal  to  exorcise  the  devils  of  anarchy 
and  Bolshevism  out  of  Europe.  We  are  being 
urged  that  our  war  task  has  left  upon  our  shoulders 
the  burden  of  all  the  crude  conditions  and  threaten- 
ing elements  of  old  and  effete  lands,  and  "we  shall 

50 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

break  the  heart"  of  the  Old  World  with  its  century 
problems  unfinished,  if  we  leave  it  to  carry  on  the 
business  which  it  has  done  so  poorly.  To  many  of 
our  thoughtful  minds  there  is  an  impending  danger 
in  an  assumption  of  the  new  order.  We  are  a  great 
people,  but  we  are  not  great  enough  to  manage  the 
universe  and  ourselves  also*.  There  is  a  saving 
yeast  in  that  heavy  dough  over  there  in  Great 
Britain  and  France.  We  have  no  business  there 
because  we  have  more  business  at  home  than  we  can 
do.  They  would  prefer  to  have  us  remain  at  home. 
We  need  desperately  at  this  time  administrative 
leaders  who  appreciate  the  appalling  tendencies 
among  us.  When  the  head  of  our  government,  who 
had  spent  six  months  in  Europe,  returned  from 
mending  its  affairs,  with  scarcely  a  word  or  thought 
of  home  interests,  in  his  absorption  in  constitution 
making  for  Europe,  it  is  not  strange  that  he  should 
be  filled  with  alarm  and  exclaim,  "I  did  not  imagine 
these  things!"  and  that  he  should  appeal  frantically 
to  Congress  to  begin  curative  legislation  at  once. 
Some  of  us  are  so  old-fashioned  in  our  Americanism 
that  we  believe  our  field  of  operation  is  here.  We 
have  no  commission  to  go  over  to  Europe  to  under- 
take the  work  of  government-making  there.  We 
find  no  obligation  for  it,  and  we  fear  no  ridicule  of 
narrowness  and  lack  of  vision.  With  a  land  that 
belts  a  hemisphere  and  the  world's  mighty  oceans 
to  guard  and  the  shores  of  two  continents  to  patrol, 
with  a  hundred  conflicting  nationalities  to  amalga- 

51 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

mate,  with  most  intense  strife  of  ideas  contending  in 
all  parts  of  a  tremendous  area,  with  a  people  of  the 
fiery  passion  of  the  South,  the  cool  inquisitiveness  of 
New  England,  the  phlegmatic  temperament  of  the 
middle  Northwest,  the  bold  adventure  of  the  far 
West,  to  say  nothing  of  the  world's  greatest  cities 
not  yet  self-governing,  it  is  not  an  unreasonable 
thing  to  urge  America  first,  and  to  insist  that  Ameri- 
cans shall  be  first  in  our  administration  and  our 
lawmaking  bodies.  We  can  neglect  nothing  that 
sacrifices  our  own  Constitution  and  jeopardizes  our 
own  peace.  We  have  done  our  duty  and  our  whole 
duty  in  war,  even  if  we  were  late  about  it.  We  can- 
not afford  to  be  drawn  away  by  the  appeals  of  an 
impracticable  and  thoughtless  sentimentalism  from 
our  stupendous  business  of  carrying  forth  the  work 
of  our  fathers.  We  have  stood  ready,  and  now 
stand  ready,  to  rescue  those  of  any  continent  or  isle 
that  are  about  to  perish  by  the  hands  of  the  oppres- 
sor, but  to  all  political  appeals,  to  all  entangling 
alliances  we  must  answer,.  uWe  are  doing  a  great 
work  and  cannot  come  down." 

There  has  been  brought  to  us  in  the  shape  of 
work  that  has  been  mapped  out  for  Europe,  the 
greatest  peril  this  country  has  known  since  the  great 
republic  was  founded.  Our  own  interests  have 
been  neglected  and  treated  with  an  indifference  that 
would  not  permit  our  recently  elected  congressmen 
to  consider  American  questions  while  an  increasing 
discontent  has  threatened  our  railways  and  im- 

52 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

periled  our  manufacture.  It  has  been  thought  more 
important  to  set  up  boundaries  for  Poland,  Czecho 
Slovak,  and  Jugo-Slovak  than  to  administer  in 
America  a  return  to  normal  prices  and  habits  from 
the  war-time  costs  of  living  which  threaten  the 
peace  of  the  country  and  menace  to  suspend  alto- 
gether its  operations. 

Not  an  hour  should  be  spent  upon  a  League  of 
Nations,  or  the  German  Treaty,  beyond  a  declara- 
tion of  cessation  of  war,  until  our  internal  conditions 
have  taxed  to  the  uttermost  the  statesmen  wisdom 
of  both  houses  of  Congress  in  measures  that  return 
us  to  pre-war  times. 

A  mighty  shock  caused  the  timbers  of  the  world's 
mightiest  republic  to  tremble.  Another  shock  has 
come  since  the  war  closed.  It  is  a  test  of  coordinate 
government.  The  great  republic  is  returning  to  its 
stability.  Reds  and  Blacks,  Soviets  and  World- 
Wides  must  be  sent  to  their  own  place.  With  the 
President  in  the  White  House,  and,  as  soon  as  it 
could  be  assembled,  the  Congress  at  the  work  of 
restoring  the  people's  business,  home  prices  should 
have  been  begun  as  measures  of  protection.  Con- 
tentment, ample  returns  of  business  and  wage,  em- 
ployment for  all  who  will  work,  is  a  country's  great- 
est safeguard  against  the  socialist  in  whatsoever 
form  he  may  appear.  We  could  take  the  chance  of 
breaking  the  hearts  of  foreign  lands  rather  than 
break  up  the  homes  of  our  own  people  with  hunger 
and  discontent.  It  is  well  to  feed  all  mankind  if 

S3 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

we  can;  but  if  we  do  not  feed  our  own,  how  can  we 
feed  anybody  anywhere? 

There  is  not  so  vast  problem  in  the  world  to-day 
as  our  own,  left  to  wander  aimless  and  unanswered 
for  the  want  of  interest  and  intelligence  in  those  who 
have  become  infatuated  with  distant  lands.  It  may 
be  well  to  prevent  war,  if  it  can  be  done — as  it  can- 
not by  any  chimera  now  urged  upon  us — but  it  is 
more  important  to  secure  the  sure  foundations  of 
the  world's  greatest  people  in  restored  industries 
and  prosperity. 

America  has  a  first  claim.  We  have  work 
enough  on  hand  for  a  full,  intelligent  administration 
if  we  devote  ourselves  wholly  to  our  internal  ap- 
peals. We  cannot  leave  them  to  the  fate  of  chance. 
We  cannot  make  a  happy  people,  all  of  the  people, 
by  an  administrative  edict  that  fixes  an  arbitrary 
price  for  the  farmers5  wheat  without  knowledge  or 
regard  to  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand,  nor  by 
proclaiming  increase  of  wage  with  no  attention  or 
question  of  how  it  is  to  be  paid  by  the  business 
assessed  by  it. 

Intelligence  must  return  to  the  helm  and  to  the 
legislative  halls.  It  cannot  too  soon  if  the  sturdy 
workingman  remains  contented  and  if  the  business 
concerns  venture  to  put  forth  their  manufacture  and 
trade. 

While  men  slept  the  enemy  sowed  his  tares  and 
hurried  away.  Our  great  land  has  been  astound- 
ingly  overgrown  with  pernicious  weeds  since  it  was 

54 


WHAT  CAN  BE  DONE? 

left  to  go  waste  with  the  close  of  the  war.  No  in- 
dustries came  to  Russia  after  its  ill-judged  revolu- 
tion, and  the  Bolsheviki  came. 

Race  riots  are  not  without  their  cause.  A  few 
more  threats,  such  as  have  just  been  made  by  leaders 
of  railway  employees  that  they  will  fix  the  railroads 
so  that  not  a  wheel  will  ever  turn  again,  will  not  stop 
the  railways  but  they  will  open  the  flood  gates  of 
blood  and  kindle  the  torch  of  incendiary  flame. 
They  are  idiotic  threats,  but  they  are  addressed  to 
wild  passion  and  unrestrained  selfishness. 

The  whole  country  as  a  whole  is  lost  to  sight. 
We  are  making  leagues.  Our  chief  business  is  to 
make  America  safe.  There  is  a  highway  sign  that 
Americans  will  do  well  to  commit  to  indelible 
memory:  "Safety  First."  Our  people  have  a  first 
claim.  The  boys  coming  back  have  a  prior  claim. 
They  may  be  reasonably  surprised  and  discontented 
if  they  find  their  places  of  employment  and  their 
homes  neglected  and  the  cost  of  living  forced  out  of 
reach.  A  peck  of  potatoes  a  dollar  and  twenty-five 
cents,  a  quart  of  milk  eighteen  cents,  a  peck  of 
green  peas  one  dollar  and  sixty  cents,  and  a  bushel 
of  wheat  two  dollars  and  twenty-six  cents,  a  dozen 
eggs  one  dollar.  Their  country  is  not  cutting  each 
other's  throats  but  robbing  each  other's  stomachs. 
It  has  turned  into  bands  of  thieves  and  is  stealing 
each  other's  pocketbooks.  It  is  making  exorbitant 
prices  because  it  can,  because  the  example  has  been 
set  for  it  in  raising  commodities  to  artificial  costs. 

55 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

The  appeal  to  the  farmer  instead  of  being  made  to 
patriotism  is  made  to  cupidity.  With  nothing  in 
cost  to  justify  it,  living  went  sky-rocketing,  and  the 
escape  was  in  increase  of  wages.  We  cannot  go 
back  too  soon. 

It  is  not  enough  to  guard  our  open  doors.  We 
must  become  rational  inside.  We  must  guard  our 
doors,  and  we  must  study  economics.  One  hundred 
per  cent  Americans  should  burn  into  their  memories 
the  stirring  appeal  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich: 

"Wide  open  and  unguarded  stand  our  gates, 
And  through  them  presses  a  wild,  motley  throng — 
Men  from  the  Volga  and  the  Tartar  steppes, 
Featureless  figures  of  the  Hoang-Ho, 
Malayan,  Scythian,  Teuton,  Kelt,  and  Slav, 
Flying  the  Old  World's  poverty  and  scorn; 
These  bringing  with  them  unknown  gods  and  rites — 
Those,  tiger  passions,  here  to  stretch  their  claws. 
In  street  and  alley  what  strange  tongues  are  loud, 
Accents  of  menace  alien  to  our  air. 
Voices  that  once  the  Tower  of  Babel  knew! 

"O  Liberty,  white  Goddess,  is  it  well 
To  leave  the  gates  unguarded?     On  thy  breast 
Fold  Sorrow's  children,  soothe  the  hurts  of  fate, 
Lift  the  downtrodden,  but  with  hand  of  steel 
Stay  those  who  to  thy  sacred  portals  come 
To  waste  the  gifts  of  freedom.     Have  a  care 
Lest  from  thy  brow  the  clustered  stars  be  torn 
And  trampled  in  the  dust.     For  so  of  old 
The  thronging  Goth  and  Vandal  trampled  Rome, 
And  where  the  temples  of  the  Caesars  stood 
The  lean  wolf  unmolested  made  her  lair." 

56 


CHAPTER  III 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

DEEP-ROOTED  already  and  so  long  neglected, 
these  fallacies  will  yield  only  to  most  persistent  and 
radical  treatment.  Some  of  them  can  be  corrected 
by  education.  Some  of  them  will  demand  protec- 
tion of  property  and  the  defense  of  personal  rights 
by  force.  If  logic  will  not  persuade,  the  law  must. 

We  have  had  to  contend  with  the  claims  of  wages 
often  disproportionate  to  the  profits  of  business.  It 
will  be  conceded  by  thoughtful  students  that  wage 
has  been  slowly  and  grudgingly  conceded  sometimes 
when  its  demands  were  just.  It  was  not  permitted 
a  fair  return  from  the  business  which  it  helped  to 
carry  forward.  The  demands  of  unusual  forms  of 
living  levied  a  heavy  tax  upon  the  home.  It  was 
plain  that  the  patrons  of  business  were  suffering  no 
embarrassment.  In  fact,  they  seemed  to  be  in  better 
circumstances.  This  created  a  friction  between  the 
employer  and  the  employee  and  forced  the  worker 
into  organization,  the  whole  issue  of  which  was 
wage.  In  time  he  became  conscious  of  his  strength. 
He  adopted  the  boycott  never  before  known  to  this 
country.  It  soon  took  another  name  and  became 
the  working  man's  strike.  And  often  the  only  ques- 
tion was  the  power  of  getting  the  wages.  The 

57 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

leaders  were  often  demagogues.  The  walking  dele- 
gates were  ignorant.  They  liked  the  loafing  job. 
They  "made  good"  by  agitation.  They  forced  up 
wages  and  were  popular.  The  great  questions  of  the 
best  interests  of  the  community  were  not  studied. 
The  plan  was  not  discriminating.  It  carried  up  the 
skilled  artisan  and  also  the  bungler  whose  only  proof 
that  he  was  a  mechanic  was  that  he  carried  a  kit  of 
tools  through  the  street.  He  paid  the  dues  of  a 
union.  He  presented  his  card  as  a  claim  upon  the 
contractor.  If  he  were  rejected,  the  whole  gang 
picked  up  their  tools  and  left. 

The  contractor,  who  was  responsible  for  finished 
workmanship,  whose  bricks  must  be  to  the  plumb 
line  and  who  must  take  them  out  at  the  order  of  the 
architect,  had  no  redress.  He  might  curse  and  pro- 
test. The  bungler  came  back  on  the  job  the  next 
morning.  The  contract  was  taken  at  a  fixed  figure 
for  material  and  for  labor.  Saturday  night  he  was 
notified  by  the  walking  delegate  or  some  labor 
functionary  that  the  next  week's  wages  would 
be  twenty  per  cent  more.  But  the  contract  price 
could  not  be  moved  up.  The  building  might  be 
stopped,  but  the  bond  held  the  contractor.  Owners 
decided  not  to  build.  That  struck  the  working- 
man.  There  had  been  no  increased  cost  of  living. 
It  was  simply  a  chance  to  pinch.  Under  no 
such  circumstance  did  a  contractor  stop  his  build- 
ing to  crowd  down  wages.  Periodically  came 
the  threatened  strike,  until  the  town  was  involved — 

58 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

the  price  of  the  poor  man's  cottage  was  prohibited 
by  the  added  cost  of  construction.  The  working- 
man  was  working  against  himself.  The  cost  of  liv- 
ing went  up.  Protective  laws  were  discussed  and 
the  politician  was  threatened.  The  whole  thing 
drifted  on  until  to-day  we  have  a  state  of  things  not 
altogether  unlike  Russia  and  recent  Austria.  In 
many  cities  for  months  building  business  is  forbid- 
den. The  current  of  population  is  turned  to  other 
towns.  Millions  of  dollars  of  damage  is  done,  and 
the  unions  win  the  battle  and  threaten  another 
strike.  The  accumulated  fund  from  fees  and  fines 
pays  the  members  their  wages  fifty  or  seventy-five 
per  cent.  Business  is  gripped  by  the  throat. 

Recent  events  show  that  wage  is  not  the  only 
strangle  hold.  The  success  of  the  conflict  over  the 
week's  pay  has  whetted  the  appetite  for  a  share  in 
the  business.  This  share  plan  was  started  by 
certain  manufacturers  as  a  pacifying  measure.  It 
was  mistakenly  believed  that  it  would  stimulate  an  in- 
terest in  the  business  upon  the  part  of  the  employee. 
How  long  did  this  fallacy  last?  It  was  expected 
that  a  minority  interest  would  be  all  that  could  pos- 
sibly be  claimed.  Not  long,  and  the  proprietor  hears 
that  a  debating  society  of  workingmen  has  had  be- 
fore it  the  question:  "Who  Creates  the  Capital?" 
It  is  decided.  Then  comes  the  practical  inquiry: 
"Should  not  the  creators  of  capital  share  more 
largely  in  its  profits,  and,  further,  ought  not  the 
workingmen  who  create  capital  to  manage  it?'* 

59 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

It  is  a  startling  proposition  to  steal  the  property 
outright  and  drive  the  owner  out  as  they  do  in 
Russia.  That  is  too  much  like  stealing  in  America. 
Let  us  get  the  government  to  buy  the  railroads! 
We  will  set  the  prices.  The  stockholders  are  ex- 
ploiters. They  have  no  claim.  They  furnished 
the  money  to  carry  on  the  business  for  a  share  in  the 
income.  But  that  must  not  be  conceded,  for  the  em- 
ployees of  the  system  furnished  the  capital !  What 
they  take  away  for  their  labor  and  carry  home  to  the 
savings  bank  or  to  support  the  family  is  too  inci- 
dental to  have  any  relation  to  the  main  question  of 
uWho  furnished  the  Capital?" 

"Confiscation"  might  be  a  more  polite  term  and 
sound  less  harsh,  but  it  seems  to  be  out  of  joint  with 
the  events,  as  there  is  nothing  in  war  or  any  emer- 
gency to  justify  taking  away  from  any  man  his 
property  registered  to  him  and  defended  by  the  Con- 
stitution. 

But  "What  is  the  Constitution  among  friends?" 
And  what  is  the  hope  of  resisting  the  extending 
Bolshevism  of  renewed  individualistic  Jeffersonian 
doctrine  that  sowed  these  seeds  in  the  beginning  of  a 
misnamed  democracy  which  'has  persisted  against 
constitutional  government  and  the  majority  rule  of  a 
republic.  What  can  be  expected  when  the  forms  of 
authority  are  set  aside,  members  of  the  most  dig- 
nified body  of  the  authoritative  control  of  the  repub- 
lic are  assailed  as  pigmies,  and  the  President  mounts 
the  platform  with  his  "fighting  blood  up"  against  a 

60 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

coordinate  body  which  the  Constitution  has  made 
of  equal  and  in  many  instances  of  veto  authority? 
Is  it  difficult  to  see  what  the  effect  is  to  be  upon  an 
increasingly  discontented  and  restless  mass  of 
laborers  who  are  already  under  the  influence  of  an 
astounding  form  of  foreign  socialism,  especially  as 
intimations  of  sympathy  are  whispered  from  sources 
of  highest  positions  of  political  influence? 

Is  it  possible  to  believe  that  with  Lincoln  or 
Garfield  or  Cleveland  in  the  presidential  chair  a 
demand  of  ownership  of  the  country's  greatest 
properties  and  franchises,  which  are  held  constitu- 
tionally if  at  all,  would  have  been  made  with  threats 
that  if  the  government  did  not  furnish  the  purchas- 
ing funds  the  property  would  be  destroyed  as  they 
do  in  Russia?  When  such  a  malady  attacks  the 
people,  it  is  not  far  to  find  a  cause.  The  cause  in 
recent  developments  is  not  distress  and  want.  The 
railway  employee  is  the  happiest  situated  working- 
man  in  America.  He  has  borne  the  reputation  of 
being  one  of  the  most  intelligent  until  since  the  war 
disturbed  the  equilibrium  throughout  the  whole 
country.  The  railway  employee  was  peculiarly  re- 
lated to  the  carrying  business  of  the  government,  its 
munitions,  its  provisions,  its  soldiers.  It  was  a  posi- 
tion of  great  responsibility  in  which  one  would 
naturally  expect  a  high  order  of  loyalty,  of  the  same 
quality  as  that  of  the  boys  hurrying  from  the  farms, 
the  shops,  and  professions  and  college  halls  to 
battlefields  across  the  seas.  The  railway  track  was 

61 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

an  infinite  gain  of  safety  and  comfort  over  the 
trenches  of  Flanders  and  northern  France.  And 
the  wages  were  multiplied  two  and  three  times.  It 
was  a  splendid  opportunity  to  serve  without  danger 
or  sacrifice.  The  whole  country  was  at  service  and 
sacrifice.  We  do  not  forget  how  astounded  the 
whole  country  was  when  the  papers  announced  that 
if  these  citizens  of  America  were  not  given  a  large 
increase  of  pay,  soldiers,  munitions,  and  provisions 
would  be  left  standing  upon  the  tracks  all  over  the 
continent!  What  an  opportunity  for  a  Grant  or 
Sherman,  for  a  Cleveland  or  Roosevelt!  What  a 
lesson  failed  of  enforcement  that  never  would  have 
been  forgotten  nor  need  to  be  repeated!  Our  boys 
were  falling  by  thousands  in  the  world's  decisive 
battle  for  the  freedom  of  those  very  employees  of 
the  railways.  The  blood  of  our  heroes  was  flowing 
across  the  fields  of  battle.  And  that  very  day  these 
home  patriots  of  the  throttle  and  the  brake  were 
being  coddled  and  their  wage  was  being  increased  at 
the  expense  of  millions  of  dollars  to  the  burden  of  a 
country  passing  out  its  millions  to  the  Red  Cross,  the 
Christian  Associations,  the  Salvation  Army,  the 
Knights  of  Columbus,  and  through  every  avenue  by 
which  the  brave  soldiers  of  human  freedom  could  be 
reached  by  men  and  women  eating  war  bread. 

At  last  the  railroads  told  the  story.  The  burden 
of  debt  was  not  millions.  It  was  billions,  not  to  be 
borne  by  the  rich  but  by  the  small  trader,  the 
mechanic  who  had  put  a  few  hundreds  in  the  bank — 

62 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

all  who  had  anything  to  tax,  bore  the  burden  in  their 
proportion.  The  greatest  burden,  imposed  upon 
this  country  by  any  business  has  been  by  the  mis- 
managed and  abused  railways.  And  now  comes  the 
amazing,  the  incredible  demand  that  the  government 
pay  these  billions  of  deficit,  go  through  the  pretense 
of  a  purchase  and  hand  the  entire  property  over  to 
men  who  showed  their  glaring  disloyalty  to  the 
country  in  the  days  of  its  extremity.  We  do  not 
believe  that  these  are  the  men  who  in  the  days  of 
Chief  Arthur  were  the  pride  of  all  men.  It  is  out 
of  this  false  interpretation  of  duty  by  the  administra- 
tion that  they  have  persuaded  themselves  that  only 
a  demand  with  a  threat  is  necessary  to  secure  the 
practical  ownership  and  entire  dictation  of  the  great- 
est railway  system  in  the  world. 

Has  America  ever  imagined  such  arrogance? 
We  thought  that  this  doctrine  had  been  buried  with 
Jefferson  in  his  grave,  beyond  hope  of  resurrection. 
And  that  the  republic  had  indoctrinated  its  sons  into 
justice  and  property  rights  and  government,  not  by 
edict  and  mandate  of  executives  or  property  by  the 
highwayman's  claim,  but  by  chosen  representatives 
of  the  whole  people  and  by  inalienable  patents. 

It  is  a  startling  awakening.  We  have  seen  the 
fallacious  claims  of  labor  in  its  contest  with  busi- 
ness, and  sometimes  there  has  been  the  argument  of 
the  Golden  Rule.  But  it  had  never  appeared  upon 
a  national  horizon  that  Americans  could  fall  the 
victims  of  such  appalling,  unreasoning  fallacy. 

63 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

If  the  railway,  why  not  the  mines,  the  wheat  fields, 
the  factories  of  every  great  business,  collective  farm- 
ing, and  every  calling  of  men  that  promises  a  greater 
return  than  the  wage  of  the  workingman?  Why 
should  not  all  yield  to  this  demand  of  covetousness 
and  fanaticism?  We  seemed  to  have  passed  the 
days  of  "the  recall"  when  the  mass  without  legal 
training  or  knowledge  should  pass  upon  the  verdicts 
of  the  courts  and  the  administration  of  governors. 
This  Jefferson-born  fallacy,  if  we  could  wait,  would 
revolt  from  itself  upon  trial,  as  Bolshevism  is  revolt- 
ing from  itself.  But  the  experiment  is  too  ex- 
pensive. What  is  left  of  our  railways  would  be 
scraps  of  iron  without  credit  to  lay  a  new  rail  or 
turn  a  wheel.  What  is  the  promise  of  improvement 
in  administration?  Has  the  employee  been  trained 
adequately  in  the  locomotive  cab  or  the  express  mes- 
senger's car,  or  the  brakeman  with  his  lantern  at  the 
train  tail-end,  or  the  fireman,  or  the  conductor,  to 
step  out  into  the  large  field  of  purchase  of  rolling 
stock,  the  employment  department,  the  freight  and 
passenger  tariffs,  the  schedules,  the  thousand  sup- 
plies, a  gigantic  business  that  taxes  the  trained  and 
disciplined  men  who  have  been  years  from  the  rails 
or  who  have  brought  the  greatest  intellect  of  the 
land  to  the  study  of  railroad  economy?  We  must 
have  been  mistaken  about  the  efficiency  of  our  rail- 
way employees.  It  has  been  supposed  that,  with 
rare  and  quickly  promoted  exceptions,  the  locomo- 
tive engineer  and  train  conductor,  the  fireman  and 

64 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

brakeman  were  obliged  to  use  all  the  ability  they  had 
to  make  time  and  run  their  trains  safely.  It  has  not 
seemed  a  small  thing  to  do,  just  the  plain,  every- 
day business  of  running  a  railroad  train.  But  now 
we  are  told  that  these  men  find  this  all  too  tame,  and 
they  are  -ambitious  to  manage  the  whole  business, 
and  not  one  of  them  ever  attended  a  night  school  of 
economics  of  any  kind,  and  on  his  own  confession  he 
cannot  figure  out  the  expense  of  his  home  on  a 
wage  fifty  per  cent  higher  than  his  neighbor,  the 
carpenter  and  the  blacksmith! 

How  are  these  proficient  men  of  the  railway  man- 
agement to  be  found  among  these  volunteers  who 
tell  us  that  -they  can  turn  the  profits  into  their  own 
pockets  if  they  can  be  permitted  to  squeeze  out  the 
men  who  have  built  them  the  roads?  How  are  they 
to  be  found?  What  test  will  be  made?  Of  course 
they  will  make  it  themselves.  Will  there  be  no 
contentions  and  strife?  Will  no  conflicting  parties 
fight  out  the  battle  of  promotion?  Who  will  con- 
tinue to  run  the  trains — the  engine  men?  the  con- 
ductors? Will  the  superintendent  come  to  the 
president's  office  and  preside  over  a  board  of  work- 
ingmen  chosen  by  their  comrades  to  determine  great 
financial  questions?  Or  perhaps  there  will  not  be 
any.  The  government  will  raise  the  money  out  of 
our  taxes.  The  general  managers  will  be  taken 
from  the  valuable  men  who  engineered  the  great 
steal.  What  will  happen  when  the  deficit  takes  the 
place  of  profit?  Will  the  deficit  be  taken  care  of 

65 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

by  special  appropriations  by  personal  recommenda- 
tions of  the  president  appearing  before  Congress  to 
state  the  case  of  the  poor  employees  who  are  serving 
the  country  without  pay  in  the  management  of  its 
railroads?  They  took  their  pay  from  the  profits, 
but  what  of  the  year  there  are  no  profits?  The  ad- 
ministration is  not  paying  $2.26  for  wheat  any 
longer,  and  that  has  cut  down  the  freight,  for  the 
consolidated  farmers  will  not  raise  wheat  unless  the 
government  guarantees  $2.26 ! 

Perhaps  we  do  not  understand  the  matter.  We 
are  old-fashioned.  We  remember  when  the  pioneers 
built  the  railways  at  great  risk  to  their  investments, 
hiring  Irishmen  by  thousands,  who  were  content 
with  wages  and  stretched  the  rails  across  the  States 
and  penetrated  the  far  prairies  with  the  locomotive. 
We  remember  how  they  built  cities  and  towns  as 
they  went,  until  they  climbed  the  Rocky  and  Sierra 
Nevada  Mountains  and  bound  with  steel  the  two 
halves  of  the  continent  together,  replacing  the  emi- 
grant trains  and  driving  out  the  buffalo  herds  with 
the  parlor  cars;  how  they  returned  the  freight  cars 
with  California  and  Oregon  fruits  and  wheat,  and 
established  an  internal  commerce  that  became  the 
amazement  of  the  world.  And  these  great  roads 
began  to  pay  a  modest  dividend.  But  the  rewards 
of  their  founders  were  in  the  pride  and  joy  of  their 
achievement.  They  bore  the  obloquy  and  slander 
of  the  politician  who  traded  on  the  prejudice  of  the 
people,  but  the  land  was  woven  with  railroads  I 

66 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

I  can  but  recall  how  when  the  roads  were  built  by 
"the  autocrats,"  who  pioneered  their  right  of  way, 
the  farmers'  farm  land  values  doubled  and  quad- 
rupled by  the  inverse  ratio  of  distance  from  the 
tracks,  and  villages  grew  in  proportion  to  proximity 
to  the  railroad.  I  have  been  told  that  towns  of 
flourishing  prospects  abandoned  their  promising 
sites,  because  the  railways  passed  them  at  an  incon- 
venient distance,  and  moved  over  to  less  favorable 
conditions  because  the  town  was  on  the  railroad. 
The  great  iron  roads  went  on  a  half  century  before 
those  men  were  born  who  now  assert  their  Bolshevik 
right  to  own  them  and  manage  them. 

Our  country  has  been  built  by  railroads  managed 
by  the  ablest  men  of  the  country,  manned  by  con- 
tented and  efficient  employees.  We  left  the  high- 
ways of  the  sea  for  future  generations  and  laid  our 
rails  in  every  direction  where  explorers  and  pioneers 
were  waiting  for  them.  Sometimes  they  fell  into 
politics  and  created  contentions  and  bitter  antago- 
nism for  a  time,  but  these  were  exceptions — an  in- 
creasing development  of  the  country  and  a  far- 
extending  civilization  and  blessings  equaled  in  the 
material  agencies  of  a  new  land.  The  railroads 
made  us  a  common  and  united  people.  If  as  many 
of  them  had  run  north  and  south  as  ran  east  and 
west,  the  story  of  the  Southland  would  have  been 
a  different  one. 

Is  it  less  than  appalling  that  a  feverish  and  insane 
socialism,  by  whatever  influence  promoted,  should 

67 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

dare  lay  the  hands  of  the  destroyer  upon  the  greatest 
dependencies  of  the  people.  A  few  months  they 
have  been  out  of  the  hands  of  their  owners.  Men 
who  have  coveted  them  as  government  utilities  have 
toyed  and  experimented  with  them.  They  would  have 
bankrupted  them,  were  it  not  that  the  government 
must  pay  the  price  of  their  disastrous  management. 
What  a  reckless  disregard  of  the  country's  future 
were  these  roads  put  into  hands  unspeakably  still 
more  inefficient  in  managerial  ability,  were  such  a 
thing  possible !  What  hardihood  and  reckless  pre- 
sumption that  would  take  over  so  great  a  responsi- 
bility !  Is  it  really  to  be  charged  up  to  workingmen 
gone  daft,  or  is  there  back  of  it  a  bold  scheme  of 
the  government  utility  delusion  by  which  an  invisible 
appeal  is  being  made  to  the  people  through  em- 
ployees, from  sources  that  awake  no  confidence  by 
their  own  insistence  of  further  experiment  at 
thirty  million  dollars  per  month?  Is  it  after  all, 
perhaps,  an  original  appeal  for  wages  by  an  argu- 
ment for  less  money  by  increased  wages  than  the  ap- 
palling deficits  by  feeble  management?  Is  it 
strategy?  Is  it  to  cover  a  retreat  upon  the  part  of 
those  higher  up?  Let  us  hope  so. 

It  is  well  known  that  many  in  the  workingmen's 
unions  and  many  ranting  socialists  contend  that  all 
capital  is  made  by  labor  and  belongs  to  labor,  and 
should  be  managed  by  labor.  But  this  is  fallacious. 
It  is  not  true  that  capital  is  created  by  labor  or  that 
labor  has  any  property  right  in  it.  If  the  laborer 

68 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

has  any  right  in  capital,  it  is  because  he  has  invested 
in  it  something  that  he  took  out  of  capital,  for  which 
capital  paid  him  in  full.  Labor  might  work  a 
thousand  years  and  add  nothing  to  the  world's  cap- 
ital. Vastly  other  elements  enter  into  capital. 
There  is  discovery  and  invention.  The  man  on  the 
Northwest  shores  of  Lake  Superior  who  added  hun- 
dreds of  millions  to  the  world's  capital  is  not  the 
workingman  who  digs  iron  ore  and  loads  it  into 
ships.  He  did  not  make  the  machinery,  nor  the 
ships  by  which  this  ore  is  taken  away.  Ten  thous- 
and of  him  were  superseded  and  set  aside  by  the 
inventor  whose  patrons  were  men  of  capital,  who 
made  it  possible  for  him  to  experiment  with  his 
inventions.  The  man  who  started  those  streams  of 
ore  flowing  eastward  to  the  steel  mills  never  did 
an  hour's  manual  labor  in  his  life.  Capital  goes 
before  labor  and  makes  it  possible  for  the  laborer  to 
put  his  muscle  and  brawn  into  the  market.  It  is 
not  the  man  who  digs  the  ore,  but  the  man  who  dis- 
covers that  the  ore  is  iron.  If  capital,  cursed  by 
the  workingman,  had  been  contented  with  iron- 
bound  chests  and  with  vaults,  and  had  lived  off  its 
gold,  instead  of  investing  in  railroads  and  factories 
and  exploring  iron  and  gold  and  lead  mines,  where 
would  labor  be  to-day?  There  would  not  be  enough 
laborers  above  slaves  and  serfs  to  form  a  union  or 
protest  the  feeblest  claim.  Capital  has  made  the 
workingman  and  keeps  him  alive.  To  say  that  he 
makes  capital  is  a  bad  case  of  putting  the  cart  before 

69 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  horse.  It  might  work  that  way,  but  it  would  be 
a  short  trip  into  the  ditch,  for  both  the  cart  and  the 
horse.  The  experiment  could  be  made  of  putting 
labor  into  the  management  of  capital,  but  we  ven- 
ture that  no  one  would  invest  in  capital. 

Trace  capital  as  far  back  as  the  age  we  call 
civilization  began  its  course,  and  you  will  find  that 
it  began  and  has  proceeded  with  intellect  at  the  head 
of  the  procession.  A  conception,  a  discovery,  some 
far-sighted  man  who  could  see  a  railway  track  the 
length  of  the  diameter  of  a  continent,  and  who 
incited  other  men  to  his  visions  and  enthusiasm  and 
who  combined  together  employed  men  who  would 
sell  their  muscle  for  an  agreed  price — and  the  world 
moved,  the  civilized  world.  Before  that  their  task- 
masters put  the  lash  to  men's  backs  and  fed  them 
indifferently.  Capital  was  conquered  and  stolen  in 
those  days. 

But  when  the  capitalist  came  along  from  fields  of 
discovery  and  invention,  the  workingman's  friend 
appeared  upon  the  earth.  If  labor  has  any  partner- 
ship relation  to  capital,  it  is  of  a  coordinate  char- 
acter. Labor,  if  it  is  honest,  efficient,  and  intel- 
ligent labor,  helps  capital  to  its  achievements.  If 
it  is  not,  it  hinders  capital.  It  is  a  question  in  recent 
years  if  it  has  not  been  about  as  much  a  hindrance 
as  a  help.  It  is  obvious  that  billions  of  dollars  of 
capital  have  been  destroyed  by  strikes  and  by  forc- 
ing upon  enterprises  of  capital  inefficient  workmen. 
The  logical  order  is  for  capital  and  labor  to  work 

70 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

together.  They  are  interdependent.  The  laboring 
man,  cursing  capital  as  he  may,  cannot  move  without 
the  leadership  of  the  man  of  capital. 

He  would  have  nowhere  to  work  and  nothing 
with  which  to  work.  Even  an  army  without  a  man 
with  plans  of  the  whole  field  contested  is  a  mob. 
Soldiers  thus  placed  may  be  the  bravest  men  who 
ever  went  into  battle,  but  they  are  helpless  and  will 
be  defeated  if  their  foe  has  a  general.  The  general 
is  the  capital  for  them.  It  would  be  as  consistent 
for  soldiers  to  accuse  a  general  of  not  fighting,  of 
never  living  in  a  trench,  nor  firing  a  machine  gun,  as 
for  workingmen  to  talk  about  capitalists  being  auto- 
crats and  indifferent  to  the  conditions  of  the  em- 
ployees doing  the  work  of  their  railways  and  iron 
mines.  Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  he  knows  the  quality 
of  steel  and  all  material  of  construction  and  that  he 
cares  nothing  for  the  efficiency  of  men,  and  will  not 
do  all  that  he  can  to  promote  it?  Capitalists  are  not 
stupid,  they  have  a  keen  appreciation  of  man 
power  and  constantly  impress  the  thought  upon  their 
representatives.  In  the  board  meeting  in  New  York, 
in  Chicago  or  San  Francisco,  in  Saint  Paul  or  Saint 
Louis  are  the  headquarters  where  every  detail  of  the 
enterprises  into  which  they  have  put  their  money  for 
profit  is  being  earnestly  considered  with  infinitely 
more  pains  than  it  takes  to  run  a  railway  train  or 
navigate  a  ship.  The  only  toiler  is  not  the  day- 
or  monthly-paid  working  man.  The  men  who  have 
built  the  railways  and  factories  are  not  the  indolent 

71 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

rich.  The  hardest-working  men  in  America  are  the 
working  capitalists.  These  men  die  young,  as  a 
rule.  They  seldom  reach  extreme  old  age.  Mark 
the  large  numbers  who  pass  out  before  their  three 
score  years  and  ten.  What  they  have  is  in  the  vast 
business.  And  if  one  kind  of  enterprise  does  not 
absorb  it  all,  they  are  found  in  another  by  which 
their  country  is  promoted  and  more  workingmen 
are  employed.  It  would  be  impossible  to  reduce  the 
business  men  of  America  to  a  state  of  indolence  and 
self-indulgence.  No  greater  misery  could  be  im- 
posed upon  them. 

In  a  recent  heated  discussion,  in  which  my  neigh- 
bor the  workingman  became  excited,  violent  and 
unguarded  language  was  used.  The  man  who  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  railway,  who  furnishes  the  capital, 
is  called  an  autocrat.  Your  dictionary  will  tell  you 
that  that  means  having  power  of  himself,  govern- 
ment residing  in  a  single  person,  supremacy,  uncon- 
trolled authority — "exercising  absolute  power,  a 
title  applied  to  the  emperors  of  Russia1' !  Could 
any  title  more  absurd  be  applied  to  an  American 
citizen?  Whence  have  these  men  come?  Trace 
their  pedigree.  Go  back  to  the  farm,  the  shop,  you 
will  find  thousands  of  them  in  the  homes  of  the  poor, 
the  parsonages  of  the  meagerly  paid  preachers,  the 
homes  of  the  blacksmith  and  the  bricklayer.  They 
bore  calloused  hands  at  day-paid  labor.  This 
"autocrat"  may  have  fired  a  freight  on  the  Union 
Pacific  when  Mr.  Harriman  made  him  an  engineer, 

72 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

and  started  him  up  the  scale  to  the  superintendent's 
office.  He  was  a  clerk  in  a  store .  and  attended 
strictly  to  business  on  poor  pay  and  good  pay, 
through  all  grades  of  the  concern  and  saved  and 
wisely  invested  his  money.  One  day  he  bought  a 
large  quantity  of  railway  bonds,  and  that  enlisted  his 
interest  in  railroading.  He  does  not  wear  overalls 
now,  but  he  would  know  how  to  put  them  on  again. 
His  supremacy  denies  nothing  to  the  humblest  work- 
ingman  repairing  a  track  of  his  road.  What  made 
him  an  autocrat  waits  any  boy  of  brains  and  applica- 
tion in  the  country.  The  autocrats  are  made  in  this 
country  by  doing  things  that  other  men  do  not  do, 
or  that  other  men  do  not  do  in  the  same  way.  And 
do  you  say  that  some  men  are  born  to  their  autoc- 
racy? They  are  the  worst  handicapped  of  all  men; 
and  if  you  say  that  the  rich  men's  sons  are  in  the 
inheritance  of  the  world's  great  positions,  your  mis- 
take is  shown  in  the  exceeding  small  number  of  such 
positions  you  find  so  filled.  We  have  no  conditions 
to  compare  with  Russian  absolutism.  For  one  to 
begin  a  cry  of  "Autocracy!"  here  is  an  attempt  to 
make  a  cause  by  an  empty  noise.  There  can  be  no 
autocracy  in  this  country.  The  richest  man  in 
America  has  but  one  vote,  and  the  most  obscure 
workingman  has  the  same.  And  if  the  rich  man 
buys  a  vote,  he  can  be  sent  to  State's  prison;  and  if 
he  is  not,  it  is  the  poor  man's  fault.  There  is  not 
much  autocracy  about  that ! 

The  danger  of  autocracy  in  this  country  is  from 

73 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

those  who  attempt  to  take  laws  into  their  own  hands 
and  dictate  the  ownership  and  control  of  private 
property,  exercising  absolute  power,  such  as  that  of 
absolute  monarchs.  Nothing  has  so  nearly  ap- 
proached it  as  the  recent  dictation  to  Congress  of 
the  way  railroads  shall  be  run. 

It  is  a  fatal  mistake  for  the  everyday  man  of 
America,  who  depends  upon  a  free  country  for  the 
future  of  himself  and  his  family,  and  upon  whom  the 
country  depends  for  its  prosperity,  to  allow  himself 
to  be  used  by  the  malcontents  who  join  to  the  insane 
socialism  struggling  for  ascendency  in  this  country 
the  alien  brand  now  being  imported.  Our  working- 
men  have  no  oppressors  to  be  delivered  from;  and 
if  they  had,  they  have  the  ballot,  the  most  effective 
weapon  the  world  has  ever  known.  We  are  not 
separated  in  far-distant  villages  with  slow  communi- 
cation and  imperfect  interchange  of  common  inter- 
ests. Nothing  can  concern  one  community,  that 
national  legislation  must  correct,  which  does  not 
concern  another.  We  have  quick  intercourse  and 
a  common  mind.  The  demagogue  is  quickly  dis- 
covered. Only  ignorance  can  give  him  any  foot- 
hold, and  the  controlling  element  is  supplied  with 
sound  literature  and  the  common  school  leaves  no 
excuse  for  any  neighborhood  to  be  misinformed. 
Where  can  happier  conditions  be  found?  What 
better  thing  is  promised?  What  justifies  discon- 
tent? The  workingman  has  to  work.  Would  it 
be  an  improvement  if  he  did  not?  What  has  the 

74 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

socialist  for  us  that  we  have  not  got?  He  may  have 
something  that  some  parts  of  Europe  has  not  had, 
but  his  blunder  there  was  in  destroying  government 
that  should  have  been  reformed  and  not  destroyed. 
It  is  a  blunder  to  listen  to  agitators  who  wish  to 
destroy  and  have  nothing  to  offer  which  will 
improve. 

Let  the  communities  in  their  churches  and  school 
buildings  put  the  questions:  What  do  we  lack?  In 
what  can  we  be  improved?  What  do  the  street- 
corner  orators  mean  by  their  clamor  that  our  gov- 
ernment should  be  destroyed?  What  is  it  they 
purpose  to  put  in  its  place,  that  they  have  which  we 
have  not? 

This  would  be  practical.  There  is  no  fear  of  the 
freedom  of  such  speech.  Those  were  good  old  days 
of  the  debating  clubs  that  met  in  the  schoolhouses. 
There  was  no  harm  because  the  error  was  answered. 

If  the  Bolshevists  and  red-tongued  and  red- 
throated  socialists  are  to  talk,  let  them  be  answered 
in  the  presence  of  sound-thinking,  loyal  citizens,  who 
will  insist  upon  the  reason  for  their  assaults  upon 
the  commonwealth  by  men  who  have  nothing  at 
stake  and  who  have  never  contributed  anything  to 
the  common  good.  Such  an  examination  of  prin- 
ciples would  establish  more  firmly  the  loyalty  of  our 
citizens  by  magnifying  their  inheritance  and  would 
confuse  the  country's  assailants  as  well.  Such 
persons  thrive  by  attacking  the  state  in  the  sympa- 
thetic crowd  when  no  answers  are  given. 

75 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

It  is  not  a  little  irritating  to  native-born  Ameri- 
cans that  comparison  should  be  made  with  the 
oppressed  and  degraded  of  certain  well-known  parts 
of  Europe.  We  are  not  in  such  a  class.  It  hu- 
miliates us  to  be  submitted  to  such  comparisons. 
Squalor  is  not  common  to  us.  The  saloon  de- 
bauched us,  but  left  us  summits  above  the  proletariat 
of  eastern  Europe.  Our  people,  the  backbone  of 
our  land,  should  resent  with  energy  the  attempt  to 
classify  them  with  the  serfs  of  autocratic  countries. 
It  comes  from  a  foe  who  would  be  resisted  to  the 
death  if  he  assaulted  our  shores  as  an  armed  force. 
We  would  shoot  him  if  he  landed  a  force  upon  us, 
but  we  tolerate  him  when  he  tells  us  that  we  ought 
to  be  killed  and  our  government  should  be  destroyed. 
Is  it  because  the  socialist  makes  himself  so  absurd 
that  he  excites  our  contempt?  That  is  best  shown 
by  the  sturdy  laborers  of  our  land  resisting  as  an 
attack  upon  their  intelligence  the  blatant  harangues 
of  the  unemployed  agitators  who  justify  their  loath- 
some lives  by  assaults  upon  the  state.  Such  crea- 
tures have  no  place  among  the  class  of  Americans 
with  whom  they  try  to  affiliate  or  to  join  themselves. 
They  claim  to  represent  the  world's  workers.  The 
American  workingman  is  a  citizen,  a  property 
holder,  and  a  voter.  He  is  a  peaceable  member  of 
society  and  respected.  The  I.  W.  W.  is  a  pernicious 
nuisance,  whom  self-respecting  citizens  who  know 
him  expel  from  their  midst. 

It  is  not  conceivable  that  the  American  working- 

76 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

man  in  any  numbers  can  be  misguided  into  joining 
themselves  to  such  enemies  of  free  institutions.  It 
is  a  great  tax  of  patience  to  tolerate  them  without 
the  tar  bucket  and  goose  feathers. 

The  value  of  the  workingman's  services  is  at 
this  point.  He  is  a  coordinate  force  in  the  improve- 
ment of  the  city  or  town.  His  intelligent  labor  is 
joined  to  the  capital  of  the  factory  and  the  improved 
estate  of  living.  But  he  is  orderly.  He  knows  his 
country.  He  belongs  to  it.  He  defends  it  against 
its  aspersers.  He  is  trusted  with  it.  These  men  are 
our  army  of  defense  in  our  domestic  and  economic 
life.  Before  them,  their  sturdy,  sound  character, 
their  sober  habits,  their  contented  industries,  the 
thrift  and  frugality  of  their  homes,  their  intelligent 
ballots,  Bolshevism  can  secure  no  firm  footing.  It 
is  put  to  shame.  It  must  retreat  in  confusion.  Our 
danger  is  not  imminent  from  that  source.  It  must 
be  transient. 

In  our  country  labor  receives  its  return  in  a  two- 
fold way  that  dignifies  the  laborer.  He  contributes 
to  the  growth  of  the  nation  by  his  skilled  labor  upon 
its  enterprises  and  improvements.  The  cities  have 
sprung  up  under  his  hammer  cooperating  with 
capital.  The  canals  connecting  inland  seas  have 
followed  his  pick  and  shovel  as  he  has  followed  the 
surveyor's  compass  and  tripod.  Ships  upon  the 
seas,  hurrying  trains,  the  aeroplane,  the  cables  be- 
neath the  ocean  interchanging  the  world's  latest 
thoughts,  all  represent  him.  He  was  capable  of 

77 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

interpreting  the  inventor's  creation  and  became  his 
associate  in  the  world's  greatest  discovery.  In  all 
this  he  stands  man  high  and  is  conscious  of  power  in 
his  personality.  A  million  men  worked  on  the  Taj 
Mahal,  and  not  one  of  them  saw  its  conception  or 
knew  upon  what  or  for  what  he  was  working.  And 
when  it  was  done  it  was  the  tomb  of  a  beautiful 
queen.  But  thousands  of  the  workers  had  been 
buried  in  mud  with  no  mark  of  their  burial.  The 
work  of  their  hands,  guided  by  genius,  was  worthy 
of  the  works  of  God.  Your  mechanic  and  artisan 
shares  in  the  inspiration  of  his  labors  in  the  work  of 
his  hands.  He  breathes  its  splendor  into  his  soul 
and  he  is  a  greater  man  for  it.  He  becomes  of  the 
stature  of  what  he  has  done.  This  is  much  of  the 
difference  among  men.  The  malcontent,  the 
destroyer  puts  the  nature  of  the  work  he  does  into 
the  deformity  of  his  countenance. 

The  next  thing  is  the  wage.  The  lower  gain  is  in 
the  wage.  That  is  always  so  of  the  nobler  man. 
That  is  what  he  takes  from  the  capitalist  to  sustain 
life.  He  has  a  right  to  it.  He  cannot  live  upon 
sentiment.  He  will  have  to  take  out  a  certain 
amount  in  the  conditions  of  our  times,  even  if  it  is  at 
the  expense  of  the  great  achievement.  That  will 
have  to  be  reckoned  with  by  the  master  builders. 
The  amount  will  have  to  be  determined  by  mutual 
agreement.  It  cannot  be  all,  or  there  can  be  no  pro- 
duct of  capital  and  labor.  It  must  not  be  enough  to 
stop  the  work,  nor  so  little  as  to  starve  the  man  or 

78 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FALLACIES 

render  his  work  inefficient.  It  may,  in  certain  con- 
ditions, pay  in  products  of  the  business,  but  the 
worker  must  then  take  his  chance  and  share  with  the 
holders  of  the  property  in  receipt  of  their  bonds  and 
stocks,  or  capital  will  go  elsewhere  and  labor  will  go 
with  empty  dinner  pails. 

The  workingman  has  a  practical  philosophy  and  a 
large  one  as  well.  He  is  sometimes  found  living  in 
a  narrow  horizon.  He  sees  only  himself.  He  must 
not  think  the  world  was  made  for  him  and  that  he  is 
all  that  counts  in  it.  Chanticleer's  voice  in  the 
morning  caused  the  sun  to  rise !  It  was  the  sun  that 
woke  Chanticleer!  Labor  has  its  large  place.  It 
is  a  pity  that  it  wastes  so  much  of  it  in  contention 
over  its  relative  importance.  There  are  great  things 
to  keep  us  busy.  Small  things  adjust  themselves  to 
great  ones.  The  world  is  looking  for  useful  men. 

The  workingmen  are  no  more  the  victims  of  au- 
tocracy than  any  other  men  who  must  chance  their 
place  in  the  world's  activities;  than,  for  instance, 
clerks  or  teachers  or  farm  hands.  Life  is  a  struggle 
for  everybody  who  makes  his  way,  and  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  suppose  that  the  world  is  against  any  par- 
ticular class,  and  that  you  happen  to  belong  to  that 
class,  and  the  only  reason  you  do  not  prosper  is 
because  men  better  situated  are  crowding  you  down. 
The  workingman  does  not  need  a  consolation  society 
any  more  than  others  who  have  to  work  their  way. 
It  is  all  a  mistake  to  hire  a  voice  to  cry  in  his  wilder- 
ness. It  would  be  far  better  to  make. his  "wilder- 

79 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ness  blossom  %as  the  rose"  by  self-reliance  and  self- 
respect.  When  men  form  a  mutual  consolation 
society  they  can  always  find  enough  for  it  to  do,  and 
when  small  politicians  and  demagogic  agitators  see 
its  increasing  proportions  and  hear  its  lamentations 
they  know  their  opportunity  and  become  self-pro- 
moters by  taking  it  up  as  their  cause.  It  is  a  great 
fallacy  for  laborers  to  pose  as  a  downtrodden  and 
abused  class.  Whining  never  made  manhood.  Our 
country  is  on  its  way  to  become  a  race  of  whiners. 
No  man  is  so  independent  as  a  good  mechanic.  His 
kit  is  inexpensive,  his  work  is  healthful  as  a  rule. 
Its  exceptions  are  being  carefully  guarded.  Ex- 
haustion is  neither  required  nor  permitted.  The 
place  a  skilled  and  honest  workman  or  workingman 
occupies  in  this  country  is  respected.  He  should  not 
depreciate  himself  by  conceding  that  he  must  protect 
himself  against  imaginary  oppression  any  more  than 
his  fellow  men  who  are  contending  with  like  con- 
ditions. 


80 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

IT  is  both  good  and  bad.  It  might  be  altogether 
good  and  helpful.  It  is  beyond  question  that  it  was 
wise  for  him  to  organize.  Advantage  was  often 
taken  of  the  fact  that  the  workingman  had  no  court 
to  which  to  appeal.  The  rough,  unreasonable  boss 
often  knew  no  justice  nor  mercy,  and  had  the  ears  of 
the  contractor  and  the  architect.  Wages  were  docked 
and  the  man  was  discharged.  Protest  upon  his  part 
at  unfair  decisions  was  answered  by  profane  notice 
to  go  up  to  the  office  and  get  his  money.  The  whole 
issue  of  wages  was  in  the  hand  of  the  contractor, 
whose  margin  was  between  the  contract  price  and 
what  he  could  save  out  of  labor's  wages.  These 
could  be  screwed  down  easier  than  the  contract  price 
could  be  screwed  up.  The  logical  result  of  it  all 
was  the  combination  of  the  mechanics  and  working- 
men,  and  as  it  originated  in  just  grievances,  it  be- 
came organized  warfare  upon  the  part  of  the  work- 
ingman against  what  he  called  capital  and  the  pluto- 
crats, when  capital  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  ques- 
tion except  to  decide  whether  it  could  afford  to  build 
at  the  price.  The  parties  at  issue  were  contractors, 
who  a  short  time  before,  in  many  cases,  were  skilled 
workingmen,  and  their  old  associates,  the  laborers 

81 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

of  the  trowel  and  the  hammer  and  the  saw.  Up  to 
this  point  the  argument  was  in  favor  of  the  working- 
man.  The  battle  raged  fiercely,  for  the  contractor 
determined  to  employ  only  nonorganized  men,  and 
the  organized  men  attacked  those  who  supplanted 
them  with  ugly  epithets  and  sometimes  with  more 
effective  weapons.  Men  were  maimed  and  at  times 
were  killed.  The  contractors  appealed  to  the  civic 
authorities  and  brought  to  their  assistance  an 
aroused  public  sentiment,  for  violence  was  un-Ameri- 
can. The  contest  took  on  the  form  of  riot,  and 
property  was  burned  and  torn  down.  One  recalls 
the  Homestead  riots  and  the  Chicago  railway  riots, 
where  hundreds  of  thousands  of  property  was  re- 
duced to  ashes  in  a  few  hours  and  a  reign  of  terror 
seized  the  communities.  The  organization  in- 
creased by  its  unlawful  methods  so  righteous  ap- 
peared its  cause.  It  was  a  fight  to  the  death.  The 
law  vindicated  the  workingman  at  certain  points  es- 
sential to  their  victory.  Legal  right  was  given  to 
organize  and  provision  was  made  for  arbitration. 
The  controversy  was  not  outlawed,  though  the 
methods  could  not  be  sanctioned  and  in  certain  cases 
were  suppressed  by  State  and  national  troops. 
Destruction  of  property  could  not  be  permitted. 
The  organization  secured  a  place  with  the  public, 
and  with  more  wisdom  would  have  commanded  pub- 
lic confidence  and  indorsement.  The  men  were  our 
neighbors.  They  were  for  the  most  part  sober  and 
industrious.  Many  of  them  were  in  the  church  and 

82 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

philanthropic  societies.  They  were  public-spirited 
and  among  our  best  citizens.  It  was  plain  that  they 
were  not  being  treated  fairly  in  many  cases.  The 
men  had  won  their  cause,  and  within  certain  limits 
were  exercising  their  rights  and  serving  their  coun- 
try. With  more  intelligence,  with  a  keener  dis- 
crimination and  a  more  careful  determination  of 
bounds  and  limits,  their  united  efforts  would  now  be 
welcomed  by  every,  community. 

There  was  opportunity  for  a  large  development. 
There  was  more  than  the  wage  question.  But  it  re- 
quired a  degree  of  statesmanship  not  found  in  unions 
with  only  one  issue.  The  walking  delegate  was  not 
of  caliber  for  the  larger  discussions.  There  were 
larger  questions  than  wages,  dues,  and  fines,  and 
membership,  and  jobs,  and  unfair  firms  and  build- 
ings. The  whole  morale  was  the  large  question,  the 
character  of  the  organization,  the  service  it  must 
render  to  the  trades.  It  must  not  be  made  a  milking 
machine,  it  must  contribute  to  the  success  of  business. 
It  must  not  use  every  advance  of  the  building  in- 
terests before  it  is  tried  out  as  an  opening  for  in- 
crease of  wages.  If  that  is  all  it  has  capacity  for, 
or  interest  in,  it  will  become  a  burden  to  the  public 
and  will  alienate  its  friends.  It  becomes  a  wage 
machine  with  a  system  of  barometers  on  all  the 
street  corners.  What  a  vast  change  in  the  confi- 
dence and  interest  of  the  public  if  these  organiza- 
tions had  addressed  themselves  to  the  improvement 
of  their  mechanics  and  insisted  that  for  increased 

83 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

pay  there  must  be  a  full  equivalent  of  service!  It 
outraged  the  public  mind  to  have  these  bodies  insist 
that  the  man  who  could  only  saw  a  board  straight 
and  drive  a  nail  sent  out  as  a  carpenter  to  be  paid  a 
mechanic's  full  wage.  What  if  the  union  had  stood 
as  the  guarantee  of  first-class  mechanics,  that  it  was 
not  enough  to  have  a  man  come  over  with  the  union 
membership  card  as  an  indorsement?  What  surer 
way  to  build  up  a  union  than  to  force  the  common 
remark:  'They  may  charge  more.  It  belongs  to 
them.  They  are  the  best  workmen  in  the  town. 
They  not  only  know  the  trade,  but  they  are  on  the 
job,  earnest  and  enthusiastic"?  No  organization 
that  is  founded  upon  selfish  motives  and  carries  for- 
ward its  propaganda  in  antagonism  to  everything  it 
cannot  use  can  hope  to  stand  in  the  confidence  of  the 
people.  Selfishness  is  the  most  hateful  thing  on 
earth.  "He  that  seeks  his  life  shall  lose  it"  is  one 
of  the  scriptures  that  has  its  proof  and  commentary 
in  the  lives  of  the  people.  It  is  the  mildew  on  many 
a  promising  plant. 

A  good  motto  for  the  union  would  be :  "We  will 
indorse  no  man  for  any  scale  of  wages  for  which  he 
has  not  qualified.  We  will  not  undertake  the  cause 
of  any  member  until  the  employer  has  a  hearing. 
We  will  not  stand  for  drunkenness,  nor  indolence, 
nor  neglect,  nor  trimming  of  the  job.  We  will  insist 
that  the  hours  having  been  agreed  upon  must  be  kept 
strictly.  For  what  we  receive  we  will  return  an 
equivalent.  We  will  impress  upon  our  men  their 

84 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

debt  to  the  town — the  public  school,  pure  water, 
cheap  and  constant  light,  reasonable  franchise,  the 
public  parks,  the  paved  streets,  the  municipal  courts, 
the  police,  the  fire  department.  As  an  organization 
we  recognize  these  claims  upon  us." 

And  if  there  were  added  a  sense  of  responsibility 
for  the  best  interests  of  the  town — its  public  build- 
ings, its  private  homes,  the  housing  of  its  increasing 
population — a  body  of  men  coordinating  in  the  com- 
munity interests  would  force  its  acceptance  and  be 
cordially  championed  by  all  the  people.  Such  an 
organization  would  stand  upon  its  own  merits.  It 
would  need  no  arbitrary  rule  against  nonunion  men. 
It  would  not  degrade  itself  by  running  men  off  a  job 
who  for  entirely  American  reasons  did  not  choose 
to  join  them.  They  would  make  their  own  way  by 
their  high  merit  and  not  by  brickbats  and  vile 
epithets.  What  other  form  of  competition  insists 
upon  the  destruction  of  its  competitor  by  either  ab- 
sorption or  violent  assault?  It  is  un-American.  It 
is  petty  tyranny.  It  is  not  worthy  of  manly  men. 
It  proposes  not  to  allow  freedom  of  choice.  All 
men  must  wear  their  badge  and  unite  with  their 
company.  There  cannot  be  a  mixed  choice.  If  one 
of  these  despised  men  is  found  in  any  distant  part  of 
the  building  or  upon  another  building  of  the  same 
ownership,  every  man  throws  down  his  hammer, 
puts  off  his  apron  and  overalls,  and  walks  out,  the 
dictator  and  tyrant  that  he  is.  Other  men  shall  not 
work  unless  they  work  his  plan  and  wear  his  collar. 

85 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

I  know  a  college  where  it  has  not  been  possible  to 
comply  with  the  insistence  of  this  organization.  It 
is  an  institution  not  State  supported.  Its  income  is 
from  the  gifts  of  the  humble  in  many  cases,  and 
always  by  the  benevolent.  The  conditions  of  organ- 
ized labor  would  increase  its  expenses  thousands  of 
dollars  with  less  efficient  help.  The  demands  are 
refused  after  explanations  have  been  made  and  the 
peculiar  conditions  have  been  explained.  It  is  voted 
in  the  organization  to  permit  no  work  to  be  done  in 
that  institution  if  it  can  be  prevented.  If  the  threat 
could  be  executed,  the  doors  would  have  to  be  closed. 
Its  work  is  charitable.  It  costs  twice  as  much  to 
educate  a  student  as  his  tuition  fees.  The  young 
men  and  young  women  must  go  uneducated  if  we 
must  compete  with  capitalists  or  dismiss  men  who, 
though  altogether  satisfactory  and  of  long  service, 
do  not  belong  to  a  union.  The  union  will  not  con- 
sent. What  more  direct  and  indefensible  form  of 
tyranny  can  be  boasted  by  the  Bolsheviki?  It  is 
astounding  that  Americans  will  submit  to  such  in- 
vasion of  personal  right.  It  is  this  that  forces 
valuable  friends  to  withdraw  from  fellowship  and 
sympathy  with  such  tyrannical  organizations.  No 
such  combination  against  freedom  has  survived  the 
liberty  of  this  country.  It  cannot  entrench  firmly 
enough  to  meet  the  issue  when  at  last  the  people 
force  it,  as  they  surely  will.  There  is  no  principle 
of  right  and  justice  upon  which  such  an  arbitrary 
action  can  stand.  A  hospital  is  involved.  Its 

86 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

laboratory  is  compelled  to  stand  uncompleted  for 
weeks  because  union  dictators  will  not  permit  the 
class  of  artisans  demanded  to  finish  the  equipment. 
A  tyranny  that  takes  no  account  of  the  sick  and  the 
dying  has  no  claim  upon  tolerance  of  humane 
people.  A  law  should  be  enacted  at  once  and  vigor- 
ously enforced,  which  would  protect  the  public  from 
organizations  that  purpose  to  perpetuate  themselves 
at  the  expense  of  suffering  humanity.  How  can 
self-respecting  men  continue  in  such  a  body  on  such 
terms?  Where  is  our  Americanism?  We  have 
been  under  the  delusion  that  a  four-square  chance  is 
in  the  Magna  Charta  of  our  freedom  to  every  man. 
Such  a  spirit  once  made  the  choice  of  a  church,  on 
peril  of  losing  heaven,  to  be  Christian  duty.  How 
long  before  such  conspiracy  will  have  to  answer  in 
the  courts?  Only  so  long  as  some  man  will  feel 
compelled  to  test  the  unlawful  assertion  of  the  ar- 
rogance of  such  a  preposterous  claim. 

It  is  dangerous  to  leave  such  unlawful  discretion 
to  any  body  of  men.  The  effect  can  be  only  un- 
wholesome. It  tends  to  disregard  law  and  to  assert 
a  right  that  sooner  or  later  conflicts  with  good  order. 
Only  within  a  few  days  we  have  heard  from  a  labor 
leader  the  startling  language  that  if  certain  conces- 
sions were  not  made  to  arbitrary  demands,  it  would 
mean  a  firing  squad!  By  whose  authority?  Who 
will  command  the  firing  squad?  Such  astounding 
assumption  is  from  the  seed  sown  in  unions  which 
dispute  the  right  of  men  to  their  constitutional 

87 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

privileges.  Can  the  public  safely,  or  with  self- 
respect,  harbor  organizations  when  such  doctrines 
are  preached  and  practiced?  The  order,  the  re- 
spect for  law,  the  impartial  service  of  the  people  is 
found  among  the  independent  workers  who  with 
great  provocation  keep  the  even  tenor  of  their  way. 
Time  will  vindicate  them.  The  man  who  makes  a 
sacrifice  of  himself  for  the  public  good  is  working 
upon  immutable  principles  of  right;  and  right,  if 
sometimes  slow,  is  always  sure. 

We  charge  that  the  labor  union  is  founded  upon 
principles  directly  opposed  to  the  principles  of  our 
government,  and  that  every  day  these  two  sets  of 
principles  are  in  conflict  and  our  national  principles 
are  defied  and  trampled  upon.  It  has  remained  for 
men  among  us,  citizens,  to  set  at  defiance  our  Declar- 
ation of  Independence  and  our  Constitution  which 
secures  to  every  man  liberty  of  personal  choice  and 
action,  so  long  as  he  obeys  the  laws  made  to  protect 
him.  It  is  his  right  to  say  what  organization, 
whether  church  or  civil,  he  shall  join,  and  any  man 
or  body  of  men  who  seek  to  coerce  him  or  hinder 
him  because  of  his  choice  violates  the  Constitution 
which  guarantees  him  his  liberty. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  thoughtful  men 
with  any  appreciation  of  human  freedom  can  join 
themselves  to  an  organization  which  is  founded  upon 
the  denial  of  that  freedom  and  which  uses  its  powers 
to  stigmatize  and  degrade  men  who  do  not  join  it,  if 
they  seek  employment  independently,  as  the  laws  of 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

their  land  provide  that  they  may.  The  American 
Constitution  says  they  shall;  the  labor  union  says 
they  shall  not,  and  if  they  do,  it  does  them  bodily 
harm  and  will  destroy  or  close  up  the  place  where 
they  try  to  work.  How  American  citizens  who 
boast  a  land  of  liberty  have  permitted  such  an 
outrage  against  their  country  is  inconceivable.  How 
a  congressman  can  pass  through  one  session  of  either 
house  of  Congress  without  urging  a  bill  against 
practices  so  disloyal  and  tyrannical  we  cannot 
imagine.  It  is  equally  amazing  that  any  community 
will  tolerate  an  organization  which  has  for  its  de- 
clared principles  preventing  men  of  the  town  to 
enjoy  and  exercise  their  individual  and  personally 
assured  right  to  labor  where  they  please,  for  whom 
they  choose,  and  for  what  they  agree  in  wage.  The 
wonder  is  that  the  eighty-five  per  cent  of  working- 
men  have  not  driven  out  of  a  town  such  fifteen  per 
cent  of  Bolshevist  tyrants  in  the  name  of  the  Consti- 
tution which  they  violate  and  outrage.  Are  men 
who  submit  to  such  things  Americans?  Are  they 
worthy  of  their  fathers,  and  safe  guides  and 
guardians  to  their  sons?  They  lack  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  citizenship.  They  cannot  much  longer 
escape  the  odium  of  craven  cowards.  They  are  con- 
senting to  an  authority  which  asserts  itself  over  the 
authority  of  our  own  laws  by  petty,  tyrannical  rulers 
whose  one  issue  is  more  wage  for  less  work.  There 
is  scarcely  a  thing  in  the  labor  union  that  is  Ameri- 
can or  that  justifies  a  claim  upon  Americans  to  a 

89 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

place  among  them.  We  say  this  with  full  apprecia- 
tion of  the  place  it  might  fill  and  the  service  it  could 
render  to  the  country  if  it  pursued  the  course  which 
we  have  mentioned.  But  nothing  can  justify  it  in 
obstructing  any  man  in  the  exercise  of  privileges 
guaranteed  to  him  by  the  Constitution  of  his 
country.  Who  gave  any  body  of  men  such  a  right  ? 
It  is  a  mistake  for  them  to  think  that  it  secures  any 
protection  to  their  organization.  It  is  deadly  in  its 
virus.  It  is  the  lion,  harmless  as  a  cub  but  vicious 
and  destructive  when  grown.  It  has  now  grown 
enough  to  show  its  teeth  and  claws,  but  it  has  not 
grown  so  big  that  it  cannot  be  controlled  or  re- 
moved. 

The  vicious  character  of  the  labor  union  is  seen 
more  and  more  startlingly  in  an  arrogant  and  grossly 
impertinent  assertion  of  control  over  business  and 
the  interference  with  personal  rights,  as  the  center  to 
which  the  soviet,  the  syndicalist,  the  I.  W.  W.,  and 
all  forms  of  socialism  gravitate.  The  effort  of  a 
few  conservative  members  to  resist  a  radical  element 
which  is  precipitating  ill-considered  strikes  and  in- 
dulging in  sabotage  practices  is  a  confession  of  the 
fact. 

To  what  other  organization  do  such  dangerous 
elements  gravitate  so  naturally?  Where  in  all  our 
country  do  Russian  Bolsheviki  find  the  suggestions 
of  the  overthrow  of  law  and  established  order 
cardinal  doctrines  with  them?  That  labor  unions 
sympathize  with  such  elements  we  do  not  charge ;  but 

90 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

if  they  will  examine  the  principles  which  they  are 
applying  to  the  determination  of  the  rights  of  non- 
union men  to  choose  their  own  fields  of  labor,  they 
may  not  be  surprised  to  find  that  the  world's  worst 
foes  claim  kinship  with  them.  In  two  or  three  years 
the  labor  unions  have  been  led  far  away  from  what 
seemed  to  be  rather  a  mild  form  of  protest  against 
those  who  would  not  be  led  by  them.  In  many 
places  to-day  they  are  being  used  in  the  efforts  which 
are  being  put  forth  to  change  the  whole  social  fabric 
and  to  destroy  all  government  as  inimical  to  man- 
kind. 

No  severer  criticism  could  be  visited  upon  the 
labor  union  than  that  it  has  been  the  rendezvous 
of  men  now  in  prison,  and  of  ex-convicts  who 
have  preached  the  doctrines  of  destruction  to  gov- 
ernment and  are  leading  the  unions  to  paralyze,  as 
far  as  possible,  the  greatest  industries  of  our  land. 
No  other  organized  body  of  men  is  in  studied  and 
boasted  violation  of  law  and  of  human  rights.  Polyg- 
amy has  gone,  the  saloon  has  gone,  opium  has  gone, 
the  gambling  dens  have  gone,  but  the  men,  who 
organize  to  say  where  I  shall  work  or  not  work,  and 
whom  I  shall  employ  or  not  employ,  walk  the  streets 
boldly  and  send  out  their  walking  delegate  to  see 
not  that  I  am  obeying  the  Constitution  of  my  coun- 
try but  if  I  am  obeying  his  selfish  constitution  which 
he  enforces  by  hurling  a  brick  through  my  window 
or  stabbing  a  dagger  into  my  back.  And  these  men, 
who  started  out  with  the  promise  of  liberty  to  the 

91 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

workingman,  have  become  so  potent  that  the  poli- 
tician is  afraid  of  them,  and  the  merchant  when  they 
enter  his  store.  The  minister  preaches  about  them— 
not  to  them,  for  not  many  of  them  are  at  church — in 
very  general  terms.  As  we  have  been  coming  on  for 
a  few  years,  and  the  Bolsheviki  in  different  forms  are 
reenforcing  the  evil,  it  will  not  be  long  before  we 
shall  find  a  government  within  the  government  as- 
serting an  authority  destructive  to  every  vestige  of 
our  old-time  liberty.  We  shall  have  to  write  a  new 
national  anthem  and  a  new  America,  for  it  would  be 
a  travesty  to  sing  "The  Star-Spangled  Banner"  and 
"My  country,  sweet  land  of  liberty."  What  is  all 
of  that  to  six  dollars  a  day  for  a  painter  and  paper- 
hanger  and  ten  dollars  a  day  for  a  bricklayer  and 
four  dollars  a  day  for  an  Italian  laborer  for  an 
eight-hour  day,  all  controlled  and  protected  by  a 
union  that  will  send  out  daily  its  walking  delegates 
to  secure  the  privilege  to  its  own  members  only?  It 
is  a  free  country;  let  the  other  poor  devils  get  a  job 
if  they  can.  They  shall  not  pollute  their  holy  men 
by  working  with  them,  even  if  there  should  be  work 
enough  for  them  all.  Is  it  not  time  to  stop  talking 
about  Bolsheviki  and  the  terrors  of  the  new  com- 
mune in  Russia? 

It  is  not  possible  for  principles  so  at  variance  with 
those  fundamental  to  the  country  to  retain  long  a 
respected  place  among  us.  One  evidence  of  this  is 
the  attempt  to  carry  them,  not  only  into  the  control 
of  a  man's  right  to  the  use  of  his  own  opportunity  in 

92 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

his  own  way,  without  dictation  or  hindrance  by 
organized  opposition,  but  also  into  the  management 
of  manufacture  and  business,  and  into  the  dictation 
of  terms  by  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  arbitration, 
but  arbitration  under  menace  of  a  strike.  Not  a 
few  people,  who  wish  the  workingman  well  and  who 
would  be  sorry  to  see  a  reversal  of  labor  conditions 
to  the  old  ways,  experience  no  small  satisfaction  that 
this  issue  is  being  squarely  met  by  the  employers.  It 
must  be  met  if  the  whole  thing  is  not  to  be  turned 
over  to  the  employees — the  hours,  the  wages,  the 
men  to  be  employed,  and  the  management  of  the 
business.  Everything  has  been  cravenly  conceded 
except  the  last,  and  has  been  so  easily  secured  that 
Mr.  Gompers  expresses  excited  surprise  that  Judge 
Gary  should  presume  to  decide  for  the  United  States 
Steel  Corporation  that  that  great  industry  will  con- 
tinue to  manage  its  own  affairs  and  not  put  them  into 
the  hands  of  socialists  and  anarchists  whose  declared 
purpose  is  to  disrupt  and  steal  the  business.  It 
would  seem  that  the  corporation  managers  upon 
their  record  may  modestly  assume  that  they  are  as 
capable  of  continuing  the  great  corporation  as  the 
imports  who  do  not  hesitate  to  attempt  the  control 
of  all  business  wherever  hated  capital  appears  and 
the  government  itself  intervenes. 

This  particular  corporation  of  steel  manufactur- 
ers not  only  does  not  make  any  demand  upon  any 
man  to  work  in  its  plants  who  does  not  find  it  to  his 
advantage  to  do  so,  but  has  paid  without  coercion 

93 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

astonishingly  high  wages  through  the  entire  scale  of 
the  employment.  Its  own  interests  are  secured  by 
treating  its  employees  generously,  who,  left  to  them- 
selves, are  contented.  When  the  astonishing  scale 
of  wages  is  published  the  reply  made  by  the  union 
general  is  that  the  contention  is  not  over  wages  but 
that  collective  bargaining,  or  meddling,  shall  be 
granted.  And  that  is  not  to  be  by  the  men  them- 
selves, who  may  be  dissatisfied,  but  outsiders  are  to 
be  permitted  to  thrust  themselves  into  affairs  that 
do  not  concern  them  and  mix  the  case  with  outside 
matters,  the  chief  object  being  to  stir  up  discontent 
and  strife. 

The  steel  strike  was  not  a  strike  by  underpaid 
men,  but  by  leaders  in  a  contention  for  the  closed 
shop.  If  the  greatest  industry  in  the  world  could 
be  unionized,  it  meant  enormous  fees  and  fines 
coveted  by  the  managers  of  union  funds.  If  it  could 
not  be  unionized,  it  meant  doom  to  all  other  at- 
tempts of  the  kind.  That  it  did  not  succeed  was  not 
because  the  U.  S.  Steel  Company  was  the  greatest  of 
all  industries,  but  because  the  demands  were  un- 
American  and  anarchistic.  It  meant  the  ruin  of  the 
business.  Better  ruin  a  ruinous  union  than  to  ruin 
the  world's  industries  and  liberties. 

Both  business  and  employment  demand  liberty, 
and  they  will  have  it.  A  meeting  called  ostensibly 
to  promote  harmony,  but  really  to  promote  the 
schemes  of  unionism,  has  worked  most  fortunately 
for  the  country.  It  has  educated  the  people  to  their 

94 


THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

danger  and  turned  the  inside  of  pernicious  plans  out 
to  the  sight  of  all  the  people.  It  is  not  the  working- 
man  whose  case  of  underpay  can  be  pleaded  tear- 
fully and  pathetically.  It  is  the  enormous  dues  in 
plain  view  but  barred  by  the  open  shop.  The  open 
shop  is  the  camel's  nose.  It  is  the  thin  edge  of  the 
wedge.  But  it  represents  eighty-five  per  cent  of  the 
workingmen  of  the  world. 

Nothing  that  is  destructive  of  our  industries,  that 
obstructs  the  free  use  of  the  inalienable  rights  of  any 
of  our  citizens,  that  spreads  class  strife  and  inter- 
feres with  neighborliness  in  communities  has  any 
right  to  the  public  confidence  and  tolerance.  The 
union  as  now  managed  comes  between  men  living 
in  the  same  block,  separates  their  wives,  and  follows 
the  children  into  the  public  schools.  It  creates  a 
prejudice  and  hatred  toward  the  men  who  make 
labor  possible,  and  who  promote  public  enterprises, 
by  branding  with  odium  the  capitalists.  It  talks  of 
autocrats  while  supporting  the  most  intolerant  and 
offensive  autocracy  in  the  world.  It  calls  the 
woman's  husband  and  the  little  boy's  father,  the 
hard-working,  frugal  temperate  man  of  the  same 
neighborhood,  a  scab  for  no  cause  or  reason  than 
that  he  chooses  to  go  his  own  way  and  use  his  own 
liberty  as  he  chooses.  It  forgets  that  a  scab  is  a 
wholesome  sign  which  nature  puts  out  when  a  wound 
is  healing,  and  that  the  dangerous  condition  feared 
by  all  surgeons  is  the  open  sore. 

The  whole  institution  of  the  labor  union  will  have 

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MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

to  change  its  principles  and  many  of  its  practices  if  it 
keeps  a  place  among  self-respecting  people.  We 
must  either  change  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  or  change  the  constitution  of  the  labor  union. 
The  first  is  the  plan  of  radicals  in  the  union.  That 
will  not  proceed  far  before  thousands  of  loyal  men 
will  withdraw  from  all  association  with  these  covert 
and  secret  enemies  of  their  country.  Nonunion  men, 
who  are  eighty-five  out  of  every  hundred  working- 
men,  will  begin  to  choose  for  their  legislators  men 
who  at  any  cost  to  themselves  will  secure  to  all  men 
equal  privileges  in  a  free  country. 

A  radical  witness  before  a  Congressional  com- 
mittee recently  admitted  that  not  more  than  one  man 
in  five  desired  to  join  the  steel  strike.  Four  fifths 
of  the  men  were  forced  to  desert  their  employers 
with  whom  they  were  contented.  How  long  can 
such  an  organization  hold  its  members,  even  if  a 
large  per  cent  of  them  are  foreign  born?  The 
source  of  the  widespread  discontent  over  the  coun- 
try is  four  fifths  of  it  due  directly  to  an  element 
within  the  organization  of  the  workingmen  bent 
upon  destruction  of  the  social  order  and  the  govern- 
ment of  the  country.  The  people  should  not  miss 
this  plain  fact.  They  should  not  be  blinded  by  de- 
mands for  union  wages.  The  posters  are  printed 
in  red  letters.  The  men  know  that  they  are  well 
paid.  They  know  that  they  are  receiving  their  full 
share  of  the  profits  of  manufacture  and  the  building 
trade.  But  the  natural  avarice  of  mankind  is  the 

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THE  WORKINGMAN'S  ORGANIZATION 

Paganini  string  upon  which  the  agitator  plays  who 
has  something  far  on  in  his  plans.  .  If  he  were  to 
disclose  his  enmity  to  the  country,  he  would  be 
driven  out  of  the  union,  for  the  great  majority  of  its 
members  are  loyal.  It  is  a  question  as  to  how  far 
an  organization  is  safe  in  the  hands  of  men,  and  how 
far  are  they  safe  in  it,  who  are  incapable  of  discover- 
ing the  foes  within  it  who  are  using  it  for  destructive 
purposes.  And  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  an  organ- 
ization will  be  trusted  and  its  mandates  followed 
which  does  not  represent  the  sentiment  of  three- 
fourths  of  its  members.  There  is  something  abject 
about  that  which  does  little  credit  to  its  member- 
ship. The  explanation  is  that  its  appeal  is  not  to 
reason  but  to  slavish  fear.  It  rules  its  own  mem- 
bers, as  it  tries  to  rule  all  men,  by  the  arts  of  tyranny. 
Our  great  country  cannot  afford  to  tolerate  and 
harbor  such  a  school  of  perverts,  such  breeding 
places  for  venomous  enemies  of  our  institutions.  If 
it  wants  to  learn  how  to  deal  with  strikes,  it  should 
go  to  their  sources  and  revoke  the  charter  of  every 
organization  where  the  foes  of  American  institutions 
find  a  welcome  and  are  given  liberty  for  their  trea- 
sonable harangues. 


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CHAPTER  V 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

A  LABOR  strike  is  a  poor  way  to  protest  against 
wage  or  abuse.  The  consequences  of  it  are  too  far- 
reaching  and  involve  too  many  who  suffer  innocently. 
It  damages  the  business  which  must  support  the 
laborers  and  injures  the  workingman  and  the  artisan 
by  reducing  the  product  and  profits,  which  have  a 
direct  bearing  upon  wage.  It  is  shortsighted  and 
reacts  upon  the  striker.  It  also  works  serious 
damage  to  the  community  in  which  the  workingman 
has  his  home.  If  it  wins  an  advantage,  it  is  un- 
reasonable and  strains  often  to  breaking  the  friendly 
relations  between  the  employer  and  employee  so 
essential  to  the  prosperity  of  both.  The  arbitrarily 
forced  demands  of  the  laborer  are  as  unfortunate  as 
the  arbitrary  dictation  and  control  of  the  employer. 
There  can  be  no  harmonious  coordination,  no  com- 
mon interest.  Compelled  employment  and  com- 
pelled labor  are  other  types  of  slavery.  It  is  dis- 
trust on  both  sides  which  goes  out  into  the  neighbor- 
hood and  disturbs  it  seriously.  It  enters  into  the 
values  of  products  and  creates  an  artificial  cost  of 
building  and  manufacture.  There  ought  to  be  pos- 
sible some  way  by  which  intelligent  men  can  come 
to  an  understanding  of  differences,  their  causes  and 

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MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

remedies,  upon  the  ground  of  mutual  interest  in 
which  contention  and  strife  will  be  subordinated  to 
the  common  good.  If  there  is  a  little  less  profit  and 
a  little  less  wage,  it  is  a  contribution  to  the  highest 
good  of  the  whole  community.  This  large  interest 
seems  to  be  lacking  entirely.  It  is  not  secured  by 
the  promotion  of  one  side,  but  both  sides.  This 
would  be  secured  if  those  concerned  were  the  con- 
tracting parties,  away  from  whom  should  be  kept 
the  outside  meddler  and  agitator.  We  never  have 
had  in  this  country  a  greater  and  more  conclusive 
evidence  of  the  fact  that  discontent  and  strikes  are 
not  from  differences  between  the  parties  immedi- 
ately concerned  than  we  are  having  to-day.  Fifteen 
hundred  strikes  in  all  parts  of  the  country,  in  every 
form  of  employment,  at  a  time  when  men  were  never 
paid  so  high  wages,  nor  were  laboring  under  so 
favorable  conditions,  is  conclusive  proof  that  the 
trouble  is  an  epidemic  from  one  and  the  same  cause. 
The  old-time  strike  is  the  seedbed  in  which  the  I.  W. 
W.  and  Bolshevist  are  sowing  crops  of  discontent 
and  unrest.  It  is  not  with  the  thought  of  increasing 
wages.  With  that  they  have  no  especial  interest. 
The  secret  purpose  is  to  use  the  workingmen  to  over- 
throw our  government  and  to  reverse  the  whole 
social  order.  This  could  not  be  done  by  direct  at- 
tack nor  by  open  and  avowed  purpose.  The  work- 
ingman  would  refute  any  argument  that  started  with 
such  a  premise.  But  too  often  he  will  contrast  his 
home  with  that  of  his  neighbor  and  listen  to  the 

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MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

flattery  that  the  difference  is  in  the  oppression  of  un- 
just conditions,  which  his  neighbor  should  share  with 
him  upon  a  basis  of  justice  and  equity.  The  ex- 
planation of  the  strike  epidemic  cannot  be  explained 
in  any  other  way. 

The  labor  organizations  have  passed  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  conservative  men  of  the  unions.  The 
active  class  in  them  has  been  indoctrinated  into 
revolutionary  and  destructive  schemes  and  is  propa- 
gating the  theories  of  common  property  by  an 
insidious  claim  for  destruction  in  the  shape  of  dis- 
proportionate wage.  Men  never  were  paid  so  much 
for  so  little  labor  as  they  are  to-day.  They  are 
going  wild  with  more  pay  and  less  hours,  which  is  a 
shrewd  and  cunning  attack  upon  conditions  which 
have  been  stable  and  prosperous  through  our  whole 
body  politic. 

One  of  the  most  serious  _eatures  of  this  form  of 
propaganda,  is  that  it  is  coming  fast  to  be  asserted 
as  a  right,  the  claim  is  for  legislative  right.  The 
strike  must  be  made  lawful,  for  there  are  many  who 
will  not  unite  in  it  if  it  is  unlawful.  The  far-reach- 
ing consequences  of  legalizing  the  strike  are  fully  ap- 
preciated by  the  propagandists  who  have  recently 
come  into  it.  It  is  no  longer  a  strike  by  working- 
men,  but  by  government  employees  as  well.  Police- 
men of  a  great  city  tear  off  their  badges  and  leave 
their  beats  to  thugs  and  thieves,  regardless  of  their 
oaths  of  office  and  the  sacred  obligation  intrusted  to 
them. 

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MY  NEIGHBORS  STRIKES 

The  time  is  now  fully  ripe  for  our  lawmakers  to 
stop  all  compromises  and  political  timidity  and  place 
before  this  perilous  force  of  coercion  the  adamant 
barrier  of  the  law.  It  should  not  only  be  in  the  case 
of  government-controlled  property  and  manage- 
ment, but  all  communities  should  be  equally  pro- 
tected. There  is  every  just  ground  for  such  legal 
restraint  and  protection.  The  strike  weapon  is  in 
the  hands  of  the  minority.  The  majority  is  firmly 
against  it. 

The  strike  is  a  conspiracy  and  nothing  less.  We 
deal  promptly  and  effectively  with  conspiracies 
against  property  and  persons  in  other  matters. 
What  delusion  has  closed  our  eyes  to  the  true  char- 
acter of  the  labor  strike  which  is  one  of  the  most 
glaring  forms  of  conspiracy  the  world  has  known? 
It  starts  with  the  organization  of  a  number  of  men  in 
an  agreed  plan  to  close  down  a  plant  by  withdrawing 
from  it  at  the  same  moment  all  of  its  employees,  and 
by  picketing  the  entrances  to  the  plant  against  any 
help  entering  the  plant  to  take  the  places  of  those 
who  have  left.  It  has  repeatedly  gone  so  far  as  to 
destroy  machines  and  even  to  blow  up  or  burn  down 
shops  and  factories.  It  recently  has  been  boasted 
that  there  is  no  law  against  the  strike.  If  there  is  a 
law  against  conspiracy,  there  is  one  against  the  strik- 
ing conspiracy.  If  there  is  not,  there  should  be  at 
once. 

What  definition  of  conspiracy  do  we  need  if  a 
combination  of  men  who  close  up  factories  and  pre- 
101 


MY  "NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

vent  their  owners  from  hiring  help  to  take  their 
places  under  threats  of  death  is  not  conspiracy? 
What  can  be  plainer  conspiracy  than  the  blocking  of 
railway  trains  by  leaving  trains  standing  on  the 
tracks  away  from  stations,  and  the  leaving  of  trolley 
cars  where  the  public  will  be  most  incommoded  and 
sometimes  imperiled?  If  we  have  no  legalized  pro- 
tection against  such  desperate  and  riotous  conduct, 
our  first  complaint  should  be  against  those  who  make 
our  laws — or,  rather,  who  do  not  make  them— 
against  the  foes  in  our  own  communities. 

No  one  will  question  the  right  of  a  man  to  leave 
his  employment  whenever  he  chooses  to  do  so.  But 
a  fair-minded  and  honest  man  will  give  his  employer 
notice  and  apply  the  Golden  Rule  to  the  act.  He 
will  not  take  a  time,  or  leave  in  such  a  way  as  to  em- 
barrass his  employer,  as  the  latter  should  not  dismiss 
the  laborer  without  notice.  That  all  ought  to  be 
understood  as  in  the  agreement  of  employment;  if 
not  expressed,  it  certainly  should  be  understood.  It 
is  wide  of  a  square  deal  when  conditions  are  used  by 
the  employee  or  employer  which  are  unfair  condi- 
tions, and  which  force  disadvantage,  embarrass- 
ment, or  loss. 

Public  sentiment  is  rapidly  changing  toward  the 
character  of  a  strike  as  something  unnecessary  and 
dangerous  to  the  community.  It  is  plain  enough 
that  in  a  time  when  laborers  are  the  best  circum- 
stanced of  any  in  the  country,  in  wages  and  cost  of 
living,  the  strike  is  unreasonable  and  without  excuse. 

102 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

Everything  is  not  wrong  everywhere.  The  labor 
union  man  is  the  malcontent.  He  is  the  striker. 
The  majority  of  workers  in  our  country  are  non- 
union. They  are  contented  and  at  work.  If  they 
believe  that  they  should  have  more,  they  say  so  and 
adjustments  are  made  by  conceding  more  or  by  an 
understanding  of  reasons  why  it  cannot  be  done. 
The  order  of  this  world  is  a  law  not  made  by  labor 
unions  or  social  agitators.  It  is  deep  in  human  life 
and  the  nature  of  things,  and  when  followed,  things 
harmonize. 

The  social  order  is  not  going  to  be  changed 
radically.  Whatever  changes,  if  any,  ever  come 
into  it  will  not  be  by  the  ignorant  and  certainly  not 
by  the  vicious.  The  greatest  of  all  Teachers, 
who  chose  the  poor  and  the  rich  for  his  friends, 
brought  no  railing  accusations  because  the  plan  of 
creation  provided  inequalities,  but  taught  that  the 
rich  and  the  poor  live  together  and  the  Lord  is 
the  Maker  of  them  all.  He  taught  an  adjustment 
of  varying  talents  and  properties  which  the  world 
has  provided  for  two  thousand  years,  and  with 
which  it  has  made  its  supreme  experiment  in  our 
great  land. 

The  laboring  man  is  not  the  only  man,  and  his 
wage  is  not  the  only  value  to  be  considered.  Wages 
are  not  the  only  thing  to  think  about.  A  thousand 
things  have  been  done  for  him  which  have  to  do  with 
his  improved  conditions  in  all  phases  of  his  life, 
which  he  must  credit  to  the  capitalist  whom  he 

103 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

permits  to  be  called  the  autocrat  and  against  whom 
the  red  socialist  seeks  to  array  him. 

There  is  no  other  country  which  can  be  compared 
with  our  workingman's  country,  and  any  visionary 
country  must  be  worked  out  before  we  leave  the 
certain  for  the  uncertain. 

It  is  significant  that  the  extended  strikes  and  the 
discontent  are  with  the  unions.  The  discontent  is  not 
with  the  men,  but  with  the  management.  There  are 
those  who  must  prove  up,  to  use  a  phrase  well  under- 
stood, who  must  make  good.  They  have  authority. 
They  use  money;  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars 
pass  through  their  hands.  It  has  been  stated  re- 
cently that  "national  labor  leaders  collect,  disburse, 
and  audit  millions  of  dollars  in  dues."  "Grafters 
get  rich  out  of  such  opportunities.  These  men  draw 
good  salaries,  live  high,  and  are  practically  mil- 
lionaires." "If  they  can  persuade  or  force  three 
hundred  thousand  steel  workers  to  pay  dues,  they 
would  get  three  million  six  hundred  thousand  dollars 
from  them  per  annum.  They  can  tell  the  men  they 
can  get  much  bigger  pay,  less  hours  to  work,  if  they 
will  strike.  If  the  strike  fails,  the  strikers  lose." 

How  far  is  the  strike  to  become  a  recognized  in- 
stitution of  our  country  with  the  sanction  of  the 
courts?  It  is  becoming  so  general  that  it  is  resorted 
to  upon  the  slightest  provocation;  it  involves  the 
country  in  values  so  vast,  trampling  liberty  so  ruth- 
lessly under  its  feet,  that  it  becomes  a  serious  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  it  can  be  tolerated  safely.  At 

104 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

this  hour  it  extends  all  over  the  country.  The  entire 
front  page  of  great  daily  papers  is  covered  with  all 
manner  of  strikes  of  nearly  every  trade.  Even  the 
theaters  are  closing  their  doors.  It  is  about  time 
for  the  churches  to  be  closed  for  easier  terms  of 
religion!  The  minister  is  about  the  poorest  paid 
servant  of  the  public.  Why  should  he  not  strike! 
The  whole  thing  is  becoming  a  farce.  With  the 
sympathetic  strike,  the  whole  land  can  be  put  in 
revolt.  If  it  is  not  a  gigantic  conspiracy,  will  the 
Supreme  Court  tell  us  what  it  is?  And  if  conspiracy 
is  not  a  crime  against  the  public  rights  and  privi- 
leges, against  personal  freedom  and  property,  what 
is  it?  Was  not  the  Danbury  hatters'  case  decided 
against  the  strikers?  Is  there  no  way  to  settle  dif- 
ferences of  opinions  that  stop  railways  on  their 
tracks,  machines  in  the  factories,  buildings  in  their 
construction,  hospitals  in  their  repairs,  and  farmers 
with  wheat  and  corn  rotting  in  the  fields?  We  can- 
not too  soon  come  to  a  clear  understanding  that  ad- 
justments of  differences  must  find  some  way  which 
will  not  destroy  the  property  and  the  lives  of  the 
innocent.  The  plan  is  unjust  and  bears  unequally 
upon  its  people.  What  is  it  to  nine  tenths  of  the 
populace  that  there  is  a  wage  disagreement  between 
certain  carpenters  and  a  contractor?  Why  should 
trolley  cars  stop  until  the  difficulty  is  settled?  What 
have  thousands  of  the  people  in  the  town  to  do  with 
the  controversy  of  tin  roofers  or  slaters  of  some 
building  under  construction?  And  why  should  the 

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MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

bricklayers  be  compelled  to  stop  work  until  the 
roofers  are  satisfied?  A  short  time  ago,  in  a 
certain  town,  a  trolley  line  extending  into  the  suburbs 
of  flourishing  villages  and  resorts  of  summer  resi- 
dences, was  tied  up  because  a  little  branch  road  con- 
tinued to  hire,  as  it  had  done  for  years,  men  belong- 
ing to  another  association.  People  were  shut  off 
from  travel  to  their  summer  homes,  and  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  villages  could  not  go  into  the  city  where 
many  of  them  were  employed  and  doing  business. 

They  must  contribute  comfort  and  profits  to  the 
settlement  of  an  arbitrary  question  which  in  no  way 
concerned  them,  that  had  no  moral  or  commercial 
feature  attaching  to  it.  A  dozen  communities  were 
incommoded  and  distressed  all  to  determine  the  pro- 
found question  of  which  union  should  be  forced  to 
yield,  not  by  merit  but  by  arbitrary  dictation.  Men 
were  forced  to  remain  away  from  their  families  or 
hire,  when  they  could  be  found,  private  conveyances 
through  the  storm,  elderly  people  with  enfeebled 
health,  persons  summoned  to  beds  of  fatal  illness 
and  death,  also  suffering  from  inconveniences  and 
for  necessities.  There  was  only  a  feeble  protest 
from  a  few  persons  immediately  concerned,  however 
much  indignation  expressed  itself  privately.  It  was 
all  passed  over  as  a  current  event.  It  was  forgotten 
with  the  next  sensation. 

It  is  strange  that  it  should  be  so,  for  it  is  not  a 
question  between  parties  of  local  interest  only.  It 
is  reaching  out  over  the  entire  country,  and  threatens 

106 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

to  control  government,  the  legislature,  Congress  and 
the  courts.  It  is  producing  no  small  .timidity  among 
politicians  of  the  better  class.  It  has  begun  to 
threaten  a  strike  by  employees  of  the  government. 
That  means  an  attack  upon  the  business  of  the  ad- 
ministration of  a  great  department.  It  is  only  what 
must  follow  as  a  sequel  to  the  settlement  of  business 
and  labor  contentions.  It  is  not  a  legitimate  conten- 
tion with  appeal  to  the  franchise  or  the  ballot.  It 
purposes  to  stop  the  United  States  mail,  the  trans- 
portation of  farm  products,  the  travel  of  persons  on 
government  business,  and  of  the  people  in  trains 
under  government  control.  That  becomes  a  more 
serious  thing.  It  is  constructive  treason.  It  is  a 
betrayal  of  trust.  The  element  of  loyalty  which 
enters  into  such  employment  and  wage  is  not  to  be 
passed  about  by  the  whims  and  notions  of  the  em- 
ployed. It  is  not  a  case  of  profits,  but  of  securing 
the  proper  service  at  or  near  cost  as  may  be.  Men 
may  leave  that  service  quietly,  if  not  content,  but 
they  have  neither  legal  nor  moral  right  to  destroy 
property  nor  to  imperil  lives  to  compel  greater 
wage.  If  dissatisfied,  they  must  wait  investigation 
and  action  by  the  government  department  con- 
cerned. The  man  looking  to  a  return  to  office  by 
election  cannot  afford  to  subject  himself  to  the  de- 
gradation of  a  threat  by  a  body  of  voters.  And  no 
men  with  a  keen  appreciation  of  propriety  under  the 
circumstances  will  make  such  an  appeal  to  members 
of  the  government.  This  country  has  seen  its  first 

107 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  its  last  shocking  impropriety 
of  this  kind — "Not  a  wheel  will  be  left  so  that  it  can 
turn."  Are  these  men  Mexican  greasers  or  Russian 
Bolsheviki?  They  are  not  talking  in  the  language 
of  American  citizens.  As  such  they  should  be 
repudiated  instantly  as  a  new  type  of  national 
enemy.  Such  a  threat  should  remove  every  man 
guilty  of  it  from  the  country's  employment  at  once. 
There  is  a  difference  between  the  freedom  of  a 
democracy  which  governs  and  controls  by  strikes 
and  a  republic  which  is  jealous  of  law  and  order  and 
which,  while  securing  liberty  to  citizens  within  the 
law  with  full  emphasis,  resists  all  trifling  with  the  in- 
stitutions and  authority  of  the  state.  It  ought  not 
to  require  much  more  of  riotous  thought  and 
language  to  give  ample  warning  of  what  is  coming, 
if  the  people  remain  supine  and  temporize  in  such 
matters.  Organized  bodies  of  men  in  large  num- 
bers, separated  by  their  pursuits  from  contact  with 
the  people,  have  a  tendency  to  become  laws  unto 
themselves  and  to  proclaim  themselves  imperiously 
and  foolishly. 

We  mistake  the  temper  of  the  American  people 
if  this  condition  is  permitted  to  extend  and  dominate 
the  country  much  longer.  The  fact  that  every 
grievance,  real  and  imagined,  is  resorting  to  the 
foolish  strike,  with  its  interruptions  of  all  kinds 
from  the  Foofers  to  the  plumbers  until  the  whole 
town  is  in  uncertainty  and  turmoil  and  no  man  can 
predict  what  his  business  is  to  be  from  one  week  to 

108 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

another,  will  call  for  a  decisive  remedy.  And  the 
man  who  leads  in  it  will  find  himself  with  an  en- 
thusiastic following.  An  encouraging  feature  of  it 
all  is  in  the  fact  that  the  rioters  and  strikers  are  in 
the  minority.  They  are  outnumbered  nine  to  one. 

Millions  in  majority  of  workingmen  are  conserva- 
tive. A  majority  of  forty  to  seventy-four  of  the 
workingmen  in  the  British  House  of  Parliament  are 
moderates.  In  the  United  States  the  majority  of 
members  of  labor  organizations  do  not  favor  ex- 
treme means,  and  if  they  consulted  their  own  judg- 
ment would  not  strike.  If  they  struck  at  all,  it 
would  be  to  utter  a  protest  and  not  to  resort  to 
violence.  The  unfortunate  thing  is  that  the  union  is 
in  control  of  vehement  men  who  enforce  their 
opinions  with  strong  personalities  upon  persons 
without  reason.  The  average  laborer  is  not  fo- 
rensic. Passionate  appeal  influences  him  and  com- 
pels many  decisions  against  sober  second  thought 
and  against  the  sound  first  thought  of  a  majority  of 
the  members.  When  into  so  unstable  an  organiza- 
tion there  comes  the  protest  of  the  people,  it  will  fall 
like  a  house  of  cards.  Its  foundations  are  in 
demagogy.  It  cannot  stand  against  the  wisdom  of 
its  own  members  and  the  rights  of  law-abiding 
citizens. 

It  should  be  conceded,  and  is  conceded  by  thought- 
ful people,  that  workingmen  should  receive  from  a 
contract  or  manufacture  all  the  wages  that  it  can 
afford  to  pay.  The  demands  of  living  have  remark- 

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MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ably  increased  in  two  generations,  in  location,  in 
sanitary  requirements,  in  common  cleanliness,  in  the 
home  habits,  in  food,  in  clothing,  in  the  education  of 
children.  These  insist  upon  more  wage.  As  the 
cost  is  now,  the  pay  must  be  more.  Business  must 
share  in  a  fair  percentage  between  the  proprietor 
and  the  laborer.  If  it  will  not,  it  will  have  to  close 
and  some  other  business  will  have  to  be  substituted 
for  it.  But  it  can  no  more  be  carried  on  with  vio- 
lence than  it  can  be  made  to  pay  a  profit  that  is  not 
in  it  without  robbing  the  workingman's  home  of  its 
wages. 

The  sympathy  of  the  people  of  this  country  is 
with  the  workingmen,  not  patronizingly  nor  as  of  an 
inferior  caste;  that  the  workingman  would  not  per- 
mit, and  that  the  people  have  not  thought  of  doing. 
But  while  that  is  true,  Americans  expect  all  men  to 
act  with  the  dignity  and  self-respect  of  Americans. 
We  have  a  Constitution,  we  have  a  prescribed  way 
of  settling  our  difficulties.  There  is  no  excuse 
among  us  for  any  men  departing  from  those  estab- 
lished usages.  If  law  can  be  violated  in  one  way,  it 
can  in  another.  What  difference  is  there  between 
burning  a  business  or  destroying  its  efficiency?  It  is 
destroyed  in  any  case.  Who  pays  the  bill,  who  reim- 
burses the  lost  receipts?  It  would  be  a  crime  for  a 
body  of  men  to  go  into  a  trolley  office  and  demand 
the  previous  day's  receipts.  What  about  tying  up 
the  cars  and  preventing  the  return  of  to-morrow's 
receipts?  To  have  stolen  the  money  out  of  the  com- 

110 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

pany's  safe  would  have  left  the  police  to  go  about 
their  business.  Of  the  two  modes  of  stealing,  the 
first  seems  less  embarrassing.  In  the  second,  the 
return  is  not  quite  so  prompt,  but  it  is  for  the  pur- 
pose of  obtaining  the  cash  nevertheless.  The  one 
great  lesson  which  the  striker  seems  not  to  have 
learned  is  that  beyond  stopping  his  own  work,  his 
right  to  physical  protest  stops.  He  is  close  upon 
conspiracy  and  assault  and  the  abuse  of  his  em- 
ployer's time  and  property.  There  are  two  sides  of 
the  question.  It  cannot  be  decided  by  the  success  of 
one  side  only.  The  fact  of  a  dispute  shows  opposite 
opinions.  Both  disputants  cannot  be  right.  One  is 
wrong  or  both  are  wrong;  both  cannot  be  right. 
Both  may  be  so  nearly  right  that  they  can  compro- 
mise. Here  is  where  sound  sense  will  take  in  a 
third  party,  like  some  retired  judge  with  a  reputa- 
tion for  probity  and  fairness,  or  three  well-known 
citizens  who  enjoy  the  full  confidence  of  the  town. 
Arbitration  between  contestants  is  honorable. 
Juries  act  upon  that  principle  in  civil  cases;  sports 
are  judged  so.  Disputed  lines  are  run  by  neighbors 
of  well-known  fairness.  Men  who  are  willing  to 
see  both  sides — and  it  is  a  strange  question  that  has 
not  two  sides — will  try  every  fair  method  before  be- 
ginning a  course  that  will  let  loose  the  worst  passions 
of  the  neighborhood  and  often  costs  not  our  prop- 
erty but  lives  as  well.  William  Hohenzollern  little 
dreamed  what  force  he  was  releasing  when  he  re- 
fused to  arbitrate  a  dispute  with  which  in  any  event 

111 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

he  had  no  business.  Men  can  never  tell  to  what 
length  a  strike  will  run  when  once  it  starts.  Some- 
thing, however,  may  be  inferred  from  the  length  to 
which  the  workingman's  resort  for  the  settlement 
of  his  wage  has  already  run. 

We  have  remarked  upon  the  strike  against  gov- 
ernment authority;  but  we  see  the  head  of  the  labor 
federation  in  Paris  fluttering  about  the  peace  coun- 
cils like  an  agitated  and  affrighted  bird — and  a  bird 
of  no  good  omen.  The  result  appears  in  the  claim 
of  the  federation,  that  the  terms  of  the  peace  with 
Germany  are  too  severe  and  should  be  protested, 
because  they  are  opposed  to  internationalizing  of 
the  brotherhood  of  labor.  The  labor  federation  is 
appearing  where  nineteen  twentieths  of  the  work- 
ingmen  never  have  been  found  themselves  in  their 
wildest  fancies,  and  for  which  they  do  not  remotely 
qualify.  Labor  unions  of  America  are  to  determine 
great  ambassadorial  questions,  and  with  startling 
egomania  take  issue  with  the  United  Council  of 
all  nations  upon  the  principle  of  how  the  con- 
clusions of  peace  will  affect  labor!  They  pro- 
pose to  federate  all  bodies  of  men  in  the  country, 
the  army,  the  police,  and  all  industries,  to  have 
all  ready  for  instant  use  in  case  of  foreign  war — 
an  adroit  subterfuge  for  the  control  of  every 
domestic  question.  We  confess  that  we  have  not 
been  prepared  for  such  a  far-reaching  assump- 
tion. The  consequence  must  be  a  change  of  govern- 
ment altogether.  When  a  change  is  desired — as 

112 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

under  such  circumstances  it  often  will  be — we  are 
not  to  call  upon  our  representatives  in  Congress  to 
consider  our  plan,  by  a  committee  in  the  Senate  or  the 
House  of  Representatives,  but  we  are  to  serve  a  no- 
tice in  any  public  matter  that  we  advocate  that  if  it  is 
not  considered  favorably  we  shall  strike  and  we  will 
tie  up  the  Congress  until  it  comes  to  a  better  mind ! 

What  about  the  rest  of  us  who  are  of  the  old- 
fashioned  mind?  The  authority  of  our  land  is  no 
longer  to  reside  in  the  houses  of  Congress  or  the 
State  Legislature.  The  army  will  be  organized  by 
the  federation  and  can  be  used  by  the  federation. 
The  police  belong  to  the  organization !  Great  ques- 
tions of  state  are  to  be  resolved  in  the  secret 
chambers  of  the  unions.  I  would  not  misjudge 
them.  We  are  forced  to  our  opinion  by  published 
and  undisputed  statements  from  their  inner  councils. 
What  use  can  our  Congress,  our  courts,  serve?  The 
federation  is  sufficient  and  the  head  of  it  is  a  Czar, 
more  autocratic  than  any  ruler  on  earth. 

All  privileges  will  be  issued  and  vised  by  the 
unions.  It  is  no  longer  who  shall  work  and  who 
shall  not.  That  is  a  small  question  long  since 
worked  out.  Nothing  so  paternal  has  ever  been 
seen  among  men.  Then  the  prison  doors  at  Atlanta 
may  swing  open  joyously.  Nearing  and  Debs  and 
the  whole  like-minded  brood  of  harpies  will  come 
flying  home.  Where  will  the  rest  of  us  fly?  Our 
wings  will  be  clipped  that  we  cannot  fly.  We  shall 
be  in  the  post-diluvial  mud. 

113 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

No  peril  so  serious  has  threatened  our  country  as 
impends  at  this  hour.  The  Civil  War  was  a  small 
affair  in  comparison  with  the  massing  of  millions  of 
our  citizens  in  a  selfish  combination  to  put  their 
interests  before  all  others,  to  push  into  second  place 
all  manufacture  and  all  trade  and  all  transportation, 
and  set  aside  the  representative  government  itself. 
This  is  "uber  alles"  beside  which  Germany  is  trivial. 
A  people  is  gone,  resolves  itself  back  into  tribal  bar- 
barism when  it  forgets  law  and  tramples  under  its 
feet  the  commonest  rights  and  claims  of  men.  Gov- 
ernment does  not  stand  in  Parliament  and  Con- 
gresses, forgotten  now,  in  statutes  ignored  and 
spurned.  It  stands  in  loyal  men  and  women  who 
might  forget  their  Bibles  but  not  their  constitutions 
and  their  laws.  But  who  will  remember  both?  A 
ship  at  sea  with  compass  thrown  aside,  trusting 
to  dead  reckoning,  is  as  safe  as  a  country  given  over 
to  the  impulsive  passion  of  bodies  of  men  who  push 
aside  our  courts  and  laws  and  settle  disputed  ques- 
tions by  angry  and  vindictive  impulses.  Voyagers 
would  not  wish  to  sail  with  such  a  mariner.  We 
were  as  safe  with  him  as  with  lawmaking  strikers, 
or,  more  truly,  unlawmaking  strikers. 

The  world  has  given  its  lessons  upon  the  subject, 
so  plentiful  that  we  cannot  mistake  the  impending 
calamity.  No  suffering  of  low  wage,  no  discomfort 
of  high  cost  of  living,  can  compare  for  an  instant 
with  dethroned  authority  and  order.  We  once  saw 
a  fire  raging  in  the  primeval  forests  of  the  State  of 

114 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

Washington,  when  it  was  a  Territory.  Firebrands 
were  hurled  at  great  distances,  kindling  instantly 
other  fires  in  the  tops  of  the  giant  firs.  It  rushed  on 
with  terrific  force  of  increasing  wind  and  flame,  sur- 
passing any  picture  of  inferno  or  the  destruction  of 
the  world  that  has  ever  been  created  by  the  imagina- 
tion of  man.  The  days  that  followed — for  the  con- 
flagration burned  itself  out  at  last  by  the  force  of  its 
own  heat  and  flame — witnessed  a  blackened  and 
wasted  land.  The  proud  monarchs  of  the  forest 
stood  gaunt  specters  of  death  for  many  miles,  the 
streams  were  chocked  with  fallen  branches  and 
blackened  boughs. 

It  was  started  by  a  careless  hunter's  match.  That 
forest  has  never  been  recovered.  That  fire  could 
have  been  stamped  out  by  a  fire  warden's  boot. 
There  was  no  fire  warden.  It  was  not  thought  that 
he  was  needed.  The  loss  of  the  great  timber,  the 
death  of  settlers  fleeing  too  late  from  the  torrent  of 
flames,  were  not  in  the  horizon  of  the  thoughts  of 
the  people.  The  careless  hunter  did  not  dream  of 
the  awful  calamity  of  his  carelessness. 

Our  country  to-day  offers  the  conditions  to  a 
social  and  domestic,  an  economic,  upheaval  which  we 
cannot  guard  too  jealously,  nor  too  soon  resist.  I 
predict  that  the  time  of  strikes  on  this  earth  is  grow- 
ing short.  Intelligent  people  will  not  much  longer 
submit  to  contempt  of  their  laws  by  an  increasingly 
defiant  and  reckless  body  of  men  who  comprise  only 
fifteen  per  cent  of  the  workingmen  of  America,  and 

115 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

whose  places  could  be  substituted  in  most  instances 
upon  twelve  hours'  notice.  The  issue  has  ceased  to 
be  an  equitable  adjustment  of  wage.  It  has  now 
come  to  be  a  question  of  respect  and  regard  for  law. 
The  decision  is  not  to  turn  upon  who  has  the  right 
of  a  controversy,  but  who  is  obeying  constituted 
authority.  It  is  not  to  be  whether  men  shall  have 
more  wages,  but  whether  they  shall  strike.  They 
shall  not  enter  a  conspiracy  that  puts  aside  law.  It 
is  not  so  important  to  prevent  strikes  to  save  prop- 
erty from  destruction,  but  to  save  law  from  destruc- 
tion. It  is  more  valuable,  inestimably  more  valu- 
able, than  property  or  human  life.  It  has  been  esti- 
mated that  institutions  of  human  freedom  are  worth 
more  than  human  lives.  We  have  just  settled  that 
question  at  the  cost  of  millions  of  lives.  No  organ- 
ization, under  any  plan  whatever,  should  be  per- 
mitted to  tie  up  any  railway  or  any  factory  or  any 
building.  The  statesmanship  of  the  United  States 
must  devise  some  way  of  protecting  all  men  against 
all  forms  of  oppression.  There  is  enough  statesman- 
ship left  to  furnish  legislation  which  will  render  the 
modern  strike  unnecessary  and  which  will  place  it  in 
the  category  of  crime.  Before  this  issue  that  enters 
into  civilization  itself  all  industrial  questions  become 
subsidiary.  A  menace  of  law  by  our  own  citizens 
is  a  summons  more  severe  than  the  invasion  of  a 
foreign  foe.  We  would  not  tolerate  the  infringe- 
ment of  our  laws  and  usages  from  outside.  It  is 
worse  from  the  inside. 

116 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

A  law  should  go  forth  at  once  from  the 
Congress  so  recently  menaced  that  all  men  who  in- 
dulge in  industrial  strikes,  or  any  combination 
against  their  fellow  men,  will  be  held  to  criminal 
accountability,  not  for  damage  to  property  or 
injuries  to  persons,  but  for  criminal  conspiracy. 
The  union  of  ten  or  more  men  in  public  demon- 
stration against  a  railroad,  or  any  form  of  in- 
dustry shall  be  a  strike,  and  a  strike  is  forbidden 
with  fixed  penalties  by  law.  Until  this  is  done  we 
shall  have  confusion  and  rioting  at  any  time  upon  the 
smallest  provocation. 

Ignorant  men,  and  men  of  small  property  inter- 
ests at  stake,  asserting  themselves  as  of  superior 
influence  and  power,  will  not  heed  nor  be  restrained 
by  anything  but  the  accomplishment  of  their  own 
desires.  How  far  they  purpose  to  go  is  seen  by 
their  plan  to  get  under  their  control  the  army, 
always  perilous  to  the  state  under  such  conditions, 
and  the  police,  as  though  it  could  belong  to  any  one 
party. 

A  strike  should  be  forbidden,  first,  because  it  is  a 
minority  attempting  to  control  by  conspiracy  against 
majorities.  Second,  because  it  is  a  body  of  men 
which  assumes  authority  over  property  in  which  it 
has  no  right.  Third,  because  it  is  reckless  of  conse- 
quences to  the  extreme  of  property  destruction  and 
danger  to  human  life.  Fourth,  because  it  drives  out 
of  their  employment  men  who  as  free  American 
citizens  have  the  right  to  labor.  Fifth,  because  it 

117 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

assumes  right  of  determining  the  matter  without  a 
vestige  of  authority  from  any  source  whatever. 
Sixth,  because  it  decides  the  quality  of  the  men  apply- 
ing without  regard  to  the  protest  of  the  contractor. 
Seventh,  because  it  involves  all  business  by  calling 
out  by  sympathetic  strikes  employees  of  all  trades 
representing  the  federation — unjust  in  the  extreme. 
Eighth,  because  it  fixes  an  arbitrary  wage  with  no 
discrimination  as  to  the  amount  of  work  done  or 
whether  one  does  a  much  larger  per  cent  of  accept- 
able service  than  another.  Ninth,  because  the 
organization  limits  apprentices  and  attempts  to  de- 
crease skilled  labor.  Tenth,  because  labor  insists 
upon  full  pay  for  men  good  and  bad  and  indifferent, 
and  recognizes  no  protest  by  the  builder  or  employer 
against  unfit  men.  Eleventh,  because  a  strike  is  a 
growing  menace  to  the  stability  of  our  country  and 
outrages  every  source  of  justice  and  inculcates  in 
forms  new  to  our  institutions  loose  ideas  of  loyalty 
which  will  work  against  the  peace  of  the  nation. 
Twelfth,  because  the  strike  and  its  doctrines  are 
working  deplorable  mischief  among  the  striking  men 
themselves,  stimulating  arrogance  and  carelessness 
concerning  fundamental  obligations  of  citizenship. 
We  have  a  marvelous  heritage  which  our  sires  at 
Concord  and  Lexington,  at  Valley  Forge  and  York- 
town,  at  Monmouth  and  Bunker  Hill,  handed  over 
to  their  children  and  their  children's  children. 
Worthy  men,  the  peers  of  the  greatest  men  of  all 
time,  closely  followed  them  and  united  with  some  of 

118 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  STRIKES 

them  in  the  construction  of  a  Magna  Charta  for  the 
preservation  of  all  for  which  they  fought.  What 
they  suffered  and  what  they  achieved,  more  than  the 
world  then  knew  of  human  freedom,  passed  into  our 
protection  as  the  greatest  inheritance  of  which 
mortals  were  capable.  What  shall  be  our  answer  if 
by  careless  diplomacy  we  negotiate  a  peace  which 
will  rob  us  of  any  guarantee  of  that  constitution, 
the  hope  of  not  only  our  own  land  but  of  all  lands 
now  struggling  blindly  for  light?  What  shall  we 
say  for  ourselves  if  in  careless  indifference  we  allow 
unquestioned  the  rioting  against  our  own  laws  by 
our  own  workingmen  who  set  up  rule  and  authority 
arbitrarily  among  us,  disregarding  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  human  freedom  themselves  and  teaching 
men  so?  The  country  waits  for  the  spirit  of  Valley 
Forge  among  our  men  of  Congress,  both  of  the 
Senate  and  the  House,  to  protect  us  against  our- 
selves. Will  they  chance  their  political  fortunes  in 
a  cause  for  which  their  fathers  died? 


119 


CHAPTER  VI 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

THE  profiteer  is  the  legitimate  business  man,  with 
his  just  profits,  after  that  business  man  runs  wild  by 
the  appeals  which  great  fortunes  are  making  in  our 
land.  He  is  the  business  man  degenerated.  Busi- 
ness has  much  with  which  to  reckon  and  none  too 
carefully.  This  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  a  majority 
of  business  men  fail.  There  is  much  more  to  it  than 
buying  at  a  given  price  and  selling  at  a  higher  price. 
The  question  of  property,  of  the  tendencies  of 
customers,  their  tastes  and  fancies,  the  expense  of 
the  establishment,  and  much  more  than  need  be 
enumerated,  enter  into  what  we  call  the  merchant's 
life,  so  much  that  it  has  made  him  one  of  the  most 
respectable  and  dependable  citizens  of  a  community. 
In  India  he  belongs  to  the  lowest  and  most  despised 
caste.  Among  the  more  advanced  nations,  judged 
by  the  highest  standards,  he  is  one  of  the  foundation 
characters,  having  his  place  in  all  that  concerns  the 
town  in  which  he  lives.  He  is  a  fixed  and  estab- 
lished resident.  His  home  is  among  us,  wisely 
chosen.  His  place  is  one  of  increasing  influence. 
Much  of  his  capital  is  in  the  good  will  of  the  people. 
He  must  stand  by  his  goods  and  his  prices  must  be  as 
low  as  those  of  like  men  in  his  and  neighboring 

120 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 


towns.     He  is  not  a  wandering  pack-peddler.     He 
must  answer  in  the  same  place  all  the  time. 

The  merchant's  calling  stands  on  equal  premium 
with  that  of  the  secular  professions.  It  is  quite  as 
honorable  for  a  son  to  go  into  a  business  house  as  it 
is  for  the  other  son  of  the  same  family  to  go  into  law 
or  medicine.  Merchants  are  patrons  of  all  char- 
itable institutions,  and  this  is  so  not  because  it  is 
good  business  to  do  it.  Merchants,  like  manufac- 
turers, are  cordially  disposed  to  the  best  things 
among  which  they  reside.  They  are,  perhaps  more 
than  any  other  business,  besieged  by  multitudes  who, 
as  pretended  or  active  customers,  plan  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  them.  We  say  this  much  because  we 
feel  that  the  time  has  come  when  vigorous  and  fear- 
less utterances  should  be  made  against  another  class 
of  traders,  sometimes  merchants,  sometimes  manu- 
facturers, and  sometimes  promoters.  They  have 
been  grouped  under  the  head  of  profiteers.  They 
are  out  for  what  they  can  make.  It  is  not  a  question 
with  them  as  to  how  they  can  make  it  or  what  may 
become  of  the  men  and  women  from  whom  they 
make  their  profits.  Such  men  are  not  builders  of  a 
town  nor  of  a  State.  They  are  leeches.  They  are 
vampires.  Equivalents  never  enter  their  heads. 
To  leave  value  received  is  not  on  their  consciences. 
They  have  no  consciences.  To  be  smarter  than 
their  victims  is  what  they  call  ability  and  shrewdness. 
Such  persons  are  a  misfortune  to  their  town.  They 
add  nothing.  They  take  everything  away  which 

121 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

they   can   grasp   by   fair   means   or    foul — usually 
foul. 

Such  characters  appear  in  times  of  greatest  stress, 
like  war  or  pestilence.  They  take  advantage  of  the 
people's  necessities.  With  them  it  is  simply  a  ques- 
tion of  what  they  can  get.  They  are  not  content  to 
make  a  fair  profit,  if  they  can  make  more.  The 
principles  that  govern  in  their  case  are  those  of  a 
burglar  or  highway  robber.  They  take  what  they 
can  get.  They  would  disclaim  theft,  but  theft  with 
them  is  barred  only  because  it  is  not  respectable  to 
be  found  out.  It  is  the  taking  of  another  man's 
money  in  either  case.  It  must  be  made  disreputable, 
as  much  so  as  stealing,  to  take  from  the  people  more 
than  a  living  compensation  for  handling  a  com- 
modity. As  a  wholesome  rule,  competition  regu- 
lates prices.  But  sometimes  it  goes  back  of  this  and 
originates  in  a  combination  that  controls  supply  and 
demand  and  fixes  by  agreement  what  shall  be  the  cost 
and  selling  price  of  a  given  article.  A  mistake  was 
made  in  offering  farmers  a  price  far  above  the 
market  to  induce  them  to  raise  wheat  in  time  of  war, 
instead  of  making  the  appeal  upon  loyalty.  The 
men  of  military  age  were  compelled  to  go  to  war. 
The  men  who  raised  their  food  were  bribed  by  an 
offer  of  twice  the  market  price  for  wheat.  And  this 
was  continued  after  the  war  closed  to  save  them 
from  loss  on  the  crop  sown  when  the  war  was  in 
progress.  Other  men  took  their  own  losses;  the 
soldier  came  back  to  find  that  the  boy  whom  he  had 

122 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

left  had  grown  two  years  older  and  taken  his  place 
in  the  store  or  the  shop.  If  it  were  sensible — as  it 
was  not — to  make  good  to  the  farmer  why  not  make 
good  to  everybody  out  of  the  people's  taxes? 

This  the  profiteer  purposes  to  do.  He  has  a  high 
example.  Much  of  our  patriotism  took  this  form 
during  the  war.  It  became  scandalous.  While 
Great  Britain  and  France  were  fighting  alone,  we 
were  making  money.  The  whole  country  seemed 
to  have  gone  mad  for  money.  The  moral  sense  be- 
came blunted.  Other  appeals  of  nobler  motives 
penetrated  with  difficulty  this  incrustation  of  avarice. 
The  love  of  money  became,  as  never  before,  the  root 
of  all  evil,  for  the  love  of  it  set  aside  humanity  and 
patriotism  with  millions  who  clamored  for  more 
wages,  more  profits,  more  dividends,  when  condi- 
tions had  not  changed.  And  though  it  is  true  that 
many  millions  poured  out  in  free  offerings  to  the 
army  through  great  charitable  organizations,  they 
were  a  bagatelle  in  comparison  with  the  imperious 
demand  for  more  profits  and  wage.  The  question 
will  force  itself,  Has  the  country  become  a  den  of 
thieves?  Has  it  abandoned  all  honor?  Does  it 
take  things  because  it  can  get  them?  Is  its  motto, 
"Things  are  going;  we  may  as  well  have  our  share 
of  them"? 

It  seems  to  have  become  a  contagion.  Is  there  to 
be  a  rearrangement  of  the  world,  a  new  adjustment 
of  values,  a  new  scale  of  wages,  and  a  new  income  all 
assured  by  rich  and  poor  to  meet  the  automobile,  the 

123 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

power  launch,  the  flying  machine,  and  the  modern 
home  with  its  luxuries  turned  to  necessities?  Is  it 
going  to  cost  more  to  live  and  too  much  to  die? 
What  is  the  problem,  what  the  new  order  of  things? 
Are  the  good  old  days  of  economy,  of  modest  habits, 
gone  by?  Is  it  discreditable  to  ask  the  price  of  an 
article  and  to  frankly  say,  "I  cannot  afford  it"  ?  Can 
the  world  yield  the  income  honestly  to  an  enor- 
mously increasing  population,  with  the  great  East 
with  its  hundreds  of  millions,  coming  forward  with 
Occidental  notions  of  living  and  with  the  ever-rest- 
less passion  for  new  things?  Is  there  to  be  gold 
and  silver  enough,  wheat  and  corn  enough,  cattle 
enough?  Will  there  be  labor  enough  to  use  the 
products  of  mechanic  arts?  We  may  say  that  the 
world  has  come  on,  meeting  every  new  condition  and 
development.  It  has  more  wisdom  locked  up  in  the 
earth  than  the  wisest  men  have  had  in  their  phil- 
osophies. As  it  has  been  in  the  past,  so  in  the 
future,  to  the  end  of  the  period,  however  far  away, 
things  will  come  to  pass  as  the  race  puts  its  demand 
over  the  counter.  But  we  cannot  set  aside  the  re- 
sponsibility left  with  all  men  to  meet  the  present-day 
demands  and  to  protect  themselves  from  extremes 
of  careless  and  designing  men.  The  world  is  not 
rich  enough  to  permit  any  of  its  treasures  to  be 
pirated  by  profiteering,  or  by  any  forces  that  are  in- 
different to  the  common  good  and  the  ultimate  high- 
est estate  among  men.  We  all  are  involved  and  all 
fear  the  burden  of  that  unpopular  old  stewardship 

124 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

that  has  eternally  been  clamoring  duty  in  our 
ears. 

The  plain  facts  are — and  write  them  out  we  can- 
not— that  we  cannot  all  have  the  luxuries  of  life; 
and  it  is  equally  true  that  if  we  could,  many  of  them 
would  not  be  best  for  us.  Plain  living  is  the  most 
wholesome  living.  Luxury  is  more  than  expensive; 
it  brings  its  care  and  strangely  does  not  satisfy. 
One  follows  the  other  with  the  same  tiring  and 
strangely  unsatisfying  results.  This  is  not  the 
verdict  of  a  misanthrope  whom  you  may  chance  to 
meet.  The  man  who  made  the  most  ample  experi- 
ment of  all  men  uses  language  strangely  familiar, 
whether  the  experience  be  boundless  or  measurable. 
"Vanities  of  vanities,  all  is  vanity!"  It  is  a  testi- 
mony most  convincing,  but  a  lesson  most  difficult  to 
learn.  Most  of  my  neighbor's  discontent  and  rest- 
lessness with  the  rich  is  in  this  difficult  lesson  which 
he  somehow  cannot  master.  The  old  lesson,  "In 
whatsoever  state  I  am,  therein  to  be  content"  is 
susceptible  of  proof  as  to  its  practicability  of  appli- 
cation and  as  to  the  wisdom  of  its  philosophy. 

It  doubtless  is  not  a  correct  statement  that  profi- 
teers comprise  a  controlling  percentage  of  the  busi- 
ness of  any  country.  They  do  not  dominate  farms 
altogether.  There  is  much  in  the  condition  of 
currency,  its  inflation  frequently  following  war  and 
the  disturbed  operations  of  supply  and  demand  when 
millions  of  men  and  women,  turned  aside  from  their 
normal  pursuits,  are  made  consumers.  These  mil- 

125 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

lions  who  have  been  producers  account  for  inflated 
costs.  Articles  cost  more  in  the  market  because  it  is 
more  difficult  to  secure  them.  There  is  a  certain 
increased  cost  of  wheat  and  corn  because  labor  is 
scarce  and  insists  upon  a  much  greater  wage.  In 
our  cities  of  the  East  there  is  vigorous  complaint 
that  milk  has  become  almost  prohibitive  to  the  poor 
and  severe  things  are  said  of  the  farmer.  But  corn 
and  bran  and  middlings  have  doubled  in  price,  and 
the  most  of  the  last  went  into  war  bread  and  flour. 
Cotton  seed  meal,  a  common  dairy  feed,  is  out  of 
reach.  Common  hay  and  alfalfa  have  doubled  in 
price,  and  farm  hands  who  could  be  employed  for 
twenty  dollars  per  month  as  competent  help,  now 
demand  and  get  forty  and  fifty  dollars.  Milk  at 
double  the  old  price  leaves  no  profit.  Besides, 
health  authorities  require  keen  inspection  of  dairy 
stables  and  utensils — the  milk  must  be  pasteurized 
after  great  precaution  of  straining  and  cleansing. 
There  must  be  boilers  and  engines  and  other  ex- 
pensive machinery,  and  this  all  means  more  help  to 
be  charged  up  to  milk  production.  We  give  this  as 
one  example  only.  The  criticism,  however,  is 
against  those  to  whom  no  cost  is  added,  but  who  take 
advantage  of  high  cost  about  them  to  force  up  what 
they  sell,  including  their  own  labor. 

The  Italian  laborer,  whose  living  expenses  are  not 
appreciatively  increased,  insists  upon  more  than 
double  his  former  wages.  The  man  who  feeds  not 
a  spoonful  of  grain  to  his  cows  charges  three  times 

126 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

more  for  milk  to  the  summer  residents  near  him, 
because  he  can  get  it  and  they  cannot  help  them- 
selves. Here  is  where  profiteering  comes  in,  not  by 
the  man  of  money  only  but  by  men  who  can  steal  a 
big  price.  A  craze,  as  we  have  said,  and  would 
emphasize,  like  some  mysterious  and  strange  epi- 
demic, has  seized  the  people  who  find  their  oppor- 
tunity to  get  a  dollar.  The  morality  of  it  does  not 
weigh  in  the  scales.  Of  course  it  is  all  a  wrong 
conception  of  life  and  duty.  Those  are  too  old- 
fashioned  questions  to  bother  about.  "Make  hay 
while  the  sun  shines, "  is  their  conclusive  answer. 

The  real  mistake  which  people  make  is  in  wrongly 
estimating  the  real  values  of  life.  At  the  risk  of 
preaching  a  bit,  I  venture  to  quote  the  greatest 
Teacher  who  has  ever  appeared  among  men,  "The 
life  is  more  than  meat,  and  the  body  is  more  than 
raiment."  That  is  the  hardest  lesson  for  men  to 
learn,  yet  there  is  none  that  is  more  constantly  en- 
forced upon  us,  or  that  ought  to  be  more  apparent. 
He  that  has  eyes  to  see  should  see  it,  and  he  that  has 
ears  to  hear  should  hear  it.  The  procession  of 
those  who  choose  the  other  way  as  they  pass  by  and 
leave  nothing  is  appalling.  Not  that  we  would 
deprecate  acquisition.  It  is  plainly  the  duty  of  men 
to  make  the  most  of  their  talents,  be  they  few  or 
many,  or  be  it  with  money,  professional  skill,  or 
manual  labor.  There  is  nothing  in  the  plan  of  this 
old  world  providing  for  asceticism  as  a  life  calling. 
Everything  contemplates  activities,  service.  In  re- 

127 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ligion  the  Gospels  say  an  hundred  times  more  about 
doing,  working,  than  believing  or  grace.  This  being 
so,  there  is  the  best  of  authority  for  a  man  to  apply 
his  life  to  serviceful  purposes. 

To  spend  one's  whole  time  upon  sustaining  the 
physical  life  with  the  meats  that  are  suited  to  it  or 
that  are  a  luxury  is  one  of  the  ways  to  lose  it.  To 
overproportion  his  attention  to  the  housing  and 
clothing  of  his  body  is  one  of  the  ways  of  starving 
his  mind.  The  rich  cannot  afford  it,  the  working- 
man,  by  the  length  of  labor  or  meagerness  of  wage, 
should  not  be  compelled  to  it.  The  adjustment  of 
the  age  should  not  be  gauged  and  timed  to  putting 
everything  into  arainy  days."  It  is  surprising  how 
few  "rainy  days"  there  are  after  all.  Multitudes 
of  people  place  everything  for  rainy  days  and  then 
have  none  of  them.  Others  inherit  their  savings  and 
use  them  in  sunny  days.  I  do  not  mean  that  there 
shall  be  no  prudence,  but  the  whole  life  must  not  con- 
sist in  "rainy  days."  Many  people  overprepare  to 
die.  They  are  no  comfort  to  themselves,  and  the 
only  comfort  they  are  to  others  is  when  they  finally 
go  out  and  leave  their  friends  to  go  on  with  the 
happy  use  of  this  wonderful  world.  Some  of  the 
old  teachings  left  the  impression  upon  people  that 
God  cares  for  every  other  world  but  this  one,  but 
that  he  had  made  such  a  mistake  in  creation  here 
that  he  wanted  to  close  it  up  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
set  it  on  fire  and  take  his  people  away  by  the  light 
of  the  flames.  We  have  vast  things  to  do  here,  and 

128 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

we  must  not  blunder  about  what  they  are  and  lose 
out  of  life  its  intrinsic  values.  The  stature  of  a  man 
is  worth  too  much  to  exchange  it  for  millions  of 
wealth.  Whatever  a  man  does,  he  must  do  it  so 
that  he  will  be  left  in  the  transaction. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  working  element  of  the 
nation  should  follow  the  example  of  the  dollar  men 
whose  successes  are  constantly  appealing  to  them. 
A  journeyman  mechanic  became  a  foreman  among 
them.  In  a  few  months  he  takes  a  contract  and 
clears  up  several  thousand  dollars.  He  becomes  the 
remark  of  all  of  his  old  chums.  He  employs  them. 
"Getting  along"  is  the  current  topic  of  conversation. 
When  he  becomes  a  bank  director  it  increases. 
When  an  expensive  automobile  goes  by  with  mem- 
bers of  his  family  it  creates  envy,  not  unnaturally. 
What  shall  be  done?  Shall  the  successful  mechanic 
stay  a  mechanic?  Shall  he  not  take  a  contract? 
Shall  he  not  have  an  auto?  That  cannot  be.  Shall 
the  less  successful  be  content  to  let  opportunities  pass 
and  leave  conditions  unimproved?  Shall  they  add 
nothing  to  their  home  comforts  and  always  work  for 
day  wage?  Not  if  they  have  the  mental  endow- 
ment and  the  training  to  be  more  and  do  more. 
That  is  not  what  is  meant  by  being  content  with 
one's  state.  It  all  turns  upon  whether  man  can  im- 
prove his  lot  by  applying  his  powers  to  his  capacity. 
If  he  cannot,  he  must  not  fret,  for  he  merits  ap- 
proval of  his  own  conscience  and  of  his  neighbors. 
He  is  not  to  fret  himself  because  of  evil-doers,  nor 

129 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

because  of  well-doers.  If  he  has  done  as  well  as  he 
can,  he  has  done  as  well  as  anyone  has  done.  The 
approval  was  to  the  man  of  two  talents  as  much  as 
to  the  man  of  five.  The  only  one  rebuked  was  the 
man  who  had  one  and  would  not  try  to  do  anything 
with  that  one. 

Modern  life  presents  exceedingly  difficult  prob- 
lems. No  philosopher  has  solved  them  yet.  How 
can  the  peculiarly  successful  man  go  on  with  his 
successes  and  not  harm  the  poor  man  with  envy, 
struggling  with  his  unequal  burdens?  How  is  it 
that  a  poor  man,  using  all  the  health  and  strength  he 
has,  and  often  no  small  measure  of  intelligence,  can 
go  on,  sober  and  industrious,  and  never  get  ahead  of 
the  last  year?  Such  a  man  must  carry  a  ballast  of 
good  sense  and  faith  in  a  divine  order  of  things  not 
to  bend  before  the  unequal  head  winds.  Many  are 
not  so  ballasted,  and  they  will  seek  explanations  in 
ways  that  do  not  accuse  themselves,  and  that  lead 
them  to  accuse  the  prosperous.  It  must  be  that  men 
profit  by  adventitious  ways,  not  by  merit;  they  have 
taken  something  that  belongs  to  the  poor.  It  mat- 
ters not  how  many  of  the  poor  they  have  employed, 
or  how  many  lessons  of  thrift  and  economy  they  have 
urged  upon  them;  they  are  represented  by  Dives,  and 
the  poor  man  is  at  their  gates  and  the  dogs  are  his 
companions.  This  is  unjust  and  unfortunate.  It 
works  against  the  poor  and  interferes  with  sound 
economy.  It  does  not  explain  the  poor  man's  mis- 
fortune and  failure,  nor  the  rich  man's  riches. 

130 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

The  rich  and  the  poor  dwell  together.  There  is 
divine  wisdom  in  the  plan.  They  always  have  so 
lived.  They  always  will  so  live.  Noble  characters 
are  in  both.  It  must  be  the  divine  order.  With 
our  finite  wisdom  we  think  we  see  that  it  would  not 
be  fortunate  for  the  world  if  all  were  rich,  nor 
would  it  be  well  if  all  were  poor.  Neither  estate 
establishes  a  monopoly  of  manhood.  Some  of  the 
choicest  hearts  that  ever  beat  in  human  breasts  have 
known  nothing  of  the  luxuries  of  wealth  nor 
scarcely  the  privileges  of  home  comforts.  They  be- 
long to  a  class  led  by  their  Master  who  had  not 
where  to  lay  his  head.  The  birds  flying  above  him 
were  better  off  than  he.  They  could  find  nests  in  the 
trees.  Such  persons  have  been  great  in  the  riches 
of  their  thoughts  and  their  deeds  are  recorded 
among  the  famous.  The  rich  also  have  left  their 
imprint  along  the  paths  of  time.  They  have  been 
friends  of  struggling  humanity.  They  have  not  for- 
gotten the  poor.  Often  their  good  is  spoken  evil  of, 
but  equally  high  do  their  names  stand  among  the 
world's  chief  benefactors.  From  all  classes  the 
man  looking  for  good  can  get  it  and  find  inspiration 
which  will  make  life  a  joy,  a  joy  that  the  rich  never 
found  in  riches  only,  a  joy  of  which  poverty  cannot 
deprive  him. 

It  all  turns  back  upon  oneself — honesty,  frugality. 
"The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  was  enviable  in  its  in- 
terior to  the  Lord's  castle.  Thousands  of  them  have 
been  scattered  over  the  earth.  You  always  rejoice 

131 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

that  you  were  born  and  raised  in  one.  You  saw 
development  of  sturdy  man  and  sweet,  gentle  woman 
there.  They  did  not  complain.  If  their  neighbor 
had  more,  they  had  less  taxes  to  pay,  and  their 
charity,  if  less  in  dollars,  came  from  hearts  as 
sacredly  devoted  to  good.  No  neighbor  appealed 
in  vain  up  to  the  measure  of  their  power.  The 
country  took  their  sons  and  left  in  the  home  no  com- 
plaint of  hard  luck.  They  did  not  all  come  back 
from  Southern  battlefields.  But  they  are  located  in 
heaven.  Sweet  memories  are  around  the  old  brick 
walls,  beneath  the  arching  elms,  among  the  holly- 
hocks and  lilacs,  the  sitting  room  within,  with  wide, 
joyous-mouthed  fireplace,  the  light  stand  and  the 
Bible  on  it,  the  very  figure  in  the  oilcloth  carpet 
where  the  sire  knelt  in  morning  prayer,  whether  the 
boys  were  home  or  away,  whether  the  day  were 
crowded  with  work  or  at  leisure.  Do  you  know  any 
place  of  riches  that  you  covet  in  exchange  for  that 
old  place  of  moderate  means,  but  infinitely  rich  in 
virtue  and  love?  You  learned  there  not  to  despise 
riches,  for  no  unkind  words  of  envy  were  spoken 
there.  You  learned  there  the  riches,  the  charm  and 
grace  of  what  the  world  calls  poverty. 

I  sat  one  day  in  my  launch,  a  pretty  thirty-foot 
boat,  the  gift  of  a  friend.  It  was  at  the  Thousand 
Islands.  The  great  yachts  went  by,  some  of  them 
touring  palaces,  some  swift  Herreshoffs.  They 
were  beautiful.  It  seemed  that  they  must  give  great 
happiness  to  their  owners.  They  cost  many  thous- 

132 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 


ands  of  dollars.  They  were  manned  by  ample 
crews  on  deck  and  in  galley  and  saloon.  They  were 
the  steam  yachts  of  the  rich.  If  I  had  been  rich,  I 
suppose  I  would  have  had  one !  While  I  was  watch- 
ing them  and  musing,  a  several-times  millionaire,  an 
acquaintance,  came  down  the  little  dock  and  got  into 
my  little  boat.  He  owned  one  of  the  finest  and  fast- 
est of  those  great  steam  yachts. 

"Well,  Mr.  H.,"  I  said,  "this  is  rather  a  small 
boat  for  you  to  board." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  came  to  see  it.  Isn't  it  fine. 
Do  you  know,  Fd  rather  have  it  than  mine.  I 
believe  I  will  buy  one  like  it." 

"Well,"  I  replied,  "I  would  exchange  with  you, 
but  I  could  not  run  yours  up  to  Kingston  and  back 
once!" 

Here  was  the  secret  illustrated.  The  burden  of 
life  was  upon  the  rich  in  his  recreation.  I  knew 
enough  not  to  envy  him  the  price  of  his  riches. 

It  is  folly  to  imagine  that  the  rich  are  having  the 
best  of  it.  He  is  not  the  man  who  sleeps  the  sound- 
est. What  he  took  on  to  make  him  independent  has 
made  him  a  slave  under  a  severe  taskmaster. 

And  again  we  run  against  the  conflicting  and 
mixed  problem.  We  cannot  make  our  choice,  for 
every  man  must  bear  his  own  burden  and  bear  it 
cheerfully.  But  happy  is  the  man  to  whom  a  wise 
and  kind  Providence  makes  the  allotment.  What  is 
best  for  me  is  the  doctrine  of  contentment  that  will 
harmonize  this  world.  Get  it  adopted  universally. 

133 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

Let  it  be  everybody's  creed  and  it  would  be  all  the 
millennium  the  world  would  need.  Then  every  man 
would  use  the  most  that  is  in  him  for  the  best  that 
he  can  do,  for  everybody  he  can  serve.  It  is  not 
what  we  get  out  of  this  world,  but  what  we  can  put 
into  it.  It  is  a  poor  specimen  of  humanity  who  can 
take  pleasure  in  transferring  by  profiteering  other 
people's  money  to  himself.  And  not  much  better 
the  man  who  envies  another  what  he  has  got.  Can 
you  imagine  yourself  changing  your  identity  with 
another?  There  is  a  certain  serious  responsibility 
that  goes  with  all  that  one  has.  There  is  a  joy  in  it, 
if  it  belongs  to  him,  but  not  much  comfort  if  it  does 
not.  Manhood,  not  money,  is  the  key  to  a  prosper- 
ous and  contented  life:  what  is  needed,  but  not 
enough.  Enough  a  man  never  has,  and  with  it 
could  be  very  miserable.  What  is  needed  is  not 
large,  and  it  means  a  comfortable  home  for  the  man 
and  his  wife  and  children;  it  means  some  books,  not 
many,  but  the  right  ones;  it  means  the  children 
sheltered  at  home  with  clean  thoughts  and  reverent 
words,  and  dressed  comfortably  for  school  and  not 
neglected  by  church  or  synagogue,  and  watched 
against  disease.  That  is  all  of  it. 

We  do  not  believe  by  any  means  that  the  plan 
with  American  workingmen  should  be  to  scrimp 
them  to  the  last  dime.  That  is  not  the  way  to  make 
Americans.  And  no  American  is  under  any  moral 
or  religious  obligation  to  be  contented  with  what  is 
left  after  the  owner  takes  his  profits,  and  the  con- 

134 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 

tractor  gets  the  lion's  share,  and  they  roll  on  in  their 
luxury.  The  business  of  this  world  has  an  obligation 
in  the  matter.  It  is  not  to  Hipponicus  with  calves, 
but  Hipponicus  with  sons.  It  is  not  builders  with 
automatic  machines,  but  builders  with  men.  And 
the  business  is  as  much  obligated  to  the  men  who 
work  as  the  workers  are  to  the  men  who  hire,  and 
more,  for  the  man  who  hires  has  more  to  be  obli- 
gated with,  and  his  obligation  does  not  cease  with 
well-fed  and  clothed  workingmen,  as  with  well-fed, 
blanketed  and  groomed  horses.  Men  are  units  of 
civilization.  They  are  men.  They  are  placed 
under  great  and  sacred  responsibilities.  There  is 
something  more  than  feeding  and  clothing  and  hous- 
ing with  their  problems.  You  go  into  their  homes 
and  you  hear  the  father  saying  to  his  sons :  "I  want 
you  to  have  a  better  chance  than  I  had.  If  I  had 
had  what  I  mean  that  you  shall  have,  I  wouldn't 
have  missed  the  foremanship  that  Tom  Cronan  got 
because  he  knew  how  to  figure."  America  has 
widened  the  whole  horizon  of  the  workingman's  sky, 
and  much  more  of  his  children's,  and  the  business  of 
America  must  be  constructed  upon  a  plan  that  will 
afford  the  mechanic  and  the  day  laborer  a  wage 
that  has  a  margin  left  over  and  that  makes  him 
known  at  the  savings  bank.  If  it  is  unfortunate  for 
him  to  covet  the  rich  man's  automobile,  he  has  a 
right  to  his  cottage  home,  healthfully  located.  If 
it  is  not  among  broad  acres  of  lawns  on  a  fashion- 
able street,  it  is  where  there  are  water  and  light  and 

135 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

clean  and  wholesome  conditions  of  every  kind — free 
from  dirt  and  poisonous  odors.  And  the  inside  of 
the  cottage  home  is  as  wholesome  as  the  outside  in 
every  way.  Business  must  be  planned  to  meet  these 
things  and  pay  for  them.  It  is  an  American  citizen 
and  his  wife  and  children  and  cottage  that  are  being 
hired,  the  mortgage  and  doctor's  bills  and  taxes  on 
the  cottage  that  must  be  reckoned  into  the  wage,  not 
by  the  laborer  only  but  by  the  employer  as  well. 

If  the  workingman  should  not  strike  nor  be  per- 
mitted to  strike  in  the  common  interest,  the  employ- 
ers ought  to  make  it  impossible  for  him  to  strike  as  a 
just  protest.  He  should  have  by  common  agree- 
ment all  that  an  American  citizen  has  a  right  to 
expect  from  the  manner  of  life  he  has  chosen.  This 
is  something  more  than  a  market  price.  He  is  not 
selling  his  labor  as  a  grocer  sells  groceries.  He  is  a 
partner  and  draws  his  share  in  wages.  It  is  beyond 
question  that  the  workingman  has  not  been  drawing 
his  full  share  from  the  business  of  the  world,  or  the 
employer  has  been  drawing  more  than  his  share. 
The  employer,  be  he  owner  or  contractor,  prospers. 
He  chooses  his  home  location.  He  lives  usually  in 
conditions  of  elegance  in  comparison  with  the  man 
whom  he  hires  by  the  day  or  the  week.  It  is  granted 
that  he  invests  more,  and  the  employer's  shares  are 
as  an  hundred  to  one.  But  should  he  take  away  the 
shares  of  the  workingman?  He  should  not  until 
the  workingman's  shares  are  large  enough  to  return 
him  self-respect  and  the  clean  and  wholesome  com- 

136 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 


ist 
th 


forts  of  life.  The  laborers  see  it  all,  and  the  more 
intelligent,  the  more  they  see. 

"We  were  laborers  together  a  few  years  ago,  this 
business  man  and  I.  He  was  as  poor  as  I.  The 
difference  has  not  all  been  in  capacity,  nor  the  in- 
equality of  luck.  Some  of  that  which  he  has  got  is 
mine.  I  am  not  reasoning  so  because  I  am  a  social- 
ist. I  have  no  sympathy  with  the  I.  W.  W.  But 

ere  is  something  of  that  estate  that  is  mine,  and 
when  they  open  his  will  and  read  out  his  tens  of 
thousands  to  his  boys,  I  know  that  some  of  it  belongs 
to  my  boys,  and  the  difference  would  be  a  comfort- 
able margin  the  way  we  live.  I  do  not  feel  that  it  is 
mine  because  the  world  owes  me  a  living.  I  know 
that  it  does  not  unless  I  earn  it.  But  it  is  mine  be- 
cause that  man  did  not  pay  me  what  I  earned  and 
what  I  needed  to  take  respectable  care  of  my  grow- 
ing family,  what  the  business  more  than  earned.  He 
did  not  pay  me  what  his  business  was  paying  him, 
and  it  paid  him  what  it  did  because  I  and  Jake  and 
Bill  and  Bob  and  a  lot  more  of  us  put  into  it  some- 
thing worth  as  much  to  the  business  as  his  money, 
and  something  without  which  it  never  would  have 
returned  him  a  dollar.  When  the  work  of  the 
factory  was  figured  for  the  year,  more  of  it  belonged 
to  us  boys.  They  say  it  made  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars  above  expenses  for  the  year.  Twenty  thou- 
sand of  it  belonged  to  us  boys  and  our  families. 

"We  make  no  claim  on  the  factory  or  the  ma- 
chinery. Not  a  dime  of  it  belongs  to  us.  If  the 

137 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

business  were  to  close  out,  we  would  have  no  right 
to  divide  up  the  property.  We  have  no  right  to 
stop  a  machine  or  to  hinder  the  business  in  any  way 
if  we  are  not  satisfied.  Our  appeal  is  to  sound 
public  sentiment,  and  to  the  sense  of  fairness  of  our 
employer.  All  we  ask  is  that  he  give  me  and  the 
other  boys  what  we  put  into  the  business  to  make  it 
succeed.  He  used  his  capital.  We  put  in  ours. 
We  feel  that  we  have  a  right  to  a  fair  return  on  it. 
We  don't  see  how  the  men  who  hire  us  get  out  mil- 
lions in  a  brief  lifetime  if  the  fellows  in  the  shops  get 
what  belongs  to  them." 

And  we  confess  that  after  hearing  this  man  talk 
this  way,  we  have  some  explanation  of  the  discon- 
tent, and  even  some  of  the  bitterness,  that  voices 
itself  in  the  subject  of  capital  and  labor  in  these 
days. 

But  there  is  a  side  to  the  complaint  which  my 
neighbor  has  not  seen  and  which  offers  its  answer 
in  the  form  of  a  fixed  law  which  seems  irrevocable. 
It  is  that  which  we  call  demand  and  supply.  That 
regulates  the  market  both  for  goods  and  for  labor. 
If  goods  are  not  demanded,  labor  is  not  wanted;  and 
if  labor  is  a  surplus  supply,  business  will  not  pay 
what  the  supply  does  not  require  it  to  pay.  It  is  a 
fine  theory  that  the  laborer  is  not  obliged  to  sell  his 
labor  in  the  market  like  chattel,  but  it  is  a  plain  fact 
nevertheless  that  that  is  exactly  what  he  does.  That 
is  what  he  has  to  sell,  and  the  market  is  made  by 
that  which  his  labor  produces.  It  is  high  or  low  as 

138 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  BAD  EXAMPLE 


products  are  more  or  less  and  the  demand  for  them 
is  great  or  small.  These  things  are  not  forced  up 
by  an  agreement  upon  the  part  of  manufacturers. 
If  there  are  good  years,  profits  go  up  and  so  do 
wages.  Wages  have  shifted  up  much  oftener  than 
profits.  The  workingmen  in  the  unions  have  in- 
sisted that  they  must  go  up  without  regard  to  pro- 
duction, whatever  happens  to  business.  And  busi- 
ness could  do  much  better  by  labor,  and  would  do  it 
voluntarily,  if  it  could  depend  upon  fixed  and  reason- 
able conditions  in  labor. 

There  are  sometimes  great  profits  in  business  far 
beyond  the  expectation  of  the  business  and  beyond 
an  equal  division  with  labor,  but  it  is  equally  true 
that  there  are  exceedingly  bad  years  when  the  losses 
threaten  bankruptcy.  Labor  is  paid  those  years, 
however,  and  often  the  conditions  are  not  mentioned, 
as  it  would  hurt  credit,  and  labor  does  not  appre- 
ciate it. 


139 


CHAPTER  VII 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

PROPERTY  rights  have  been  acknowledged  ever 
since  man  found  it  possible  to  secure  property  by 
discovery,  by  toil,  or  by  inheritance  from  those  who 
had  a  right  to  convey  to  others  what  they  cannot 
take  away  with  them.  Possession  has  sometimes 
been  secured  by  savage  strength,  unjustly  and 
cruelly;  but  as  that  was  the  only  law,  it  established 
a  right  of  possession  which  could  not  be  reversed 
until  some  greater  savage  strength  came  along  and 
captured  it.  It  was  not  a  right  acknowledged  in 
justice,  but  it  had  to  be  admitted  and  conceded  in 
fact.  In  civilized  forms  it  has  been  established  in 
what  we  call  law  and  property — voices  as  laws  are 
interpreted,  usually  justly,  sometimes  unjustly.  No 
man  can  take  it  because  another  has  it  or  has  more 
than  he  has.  No  man  can  assert  a  claim  because  he 
thinks  the  world  is  wrong  in  dividing  it.  No  man 
can  go  out  with  nothing  and  establish  a  claim  upon 
anything.  He  must  have  something  to  start  with  to 
get  anything.  "To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given." 
A  theory  has  recently  been  reasserted  that  the 
wealth  of  the  world  shall  be  divided  among  all  the 
people.  And  only  the  other  day,  in  Germany,  the 
land  from  which  so  much  misery  has  come  in  five 

HO 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

years,  the  workingmen  decided  that  men  were  under 
no  obligation  to  work  and  that  they  would  not  work. 
And  yet  they  asserted  a  right  to  property.  But  to 
whose  property?  And  where  are  they  to  find  it  not 
claimed  and  occupied  by  an  authority,  at  least  by  as 
firm  an  authority  as  these  men  of  Bremen  can  bring 
with  them?  And  what  is  the  argument  that  is  to 
dispossess  one  man  and  give  it  to  another?  Because 
he  needs  it?  So  does  the  man  who  has  it.  The  law 
of  necessity  works  both  ways.  What  proportion  of 
it  shall  be  taken?  Until  the  want  is  satisfied?  And 
shall  it  be  surrendered  by  its  owner  until  he  is  willing 
to  let  some  or  all  of  it  go?  Then  he  would  never 
give  up  a  dollar  of  it,  for  if  there  is  anything  inher- 
ent in  man,  it  is  the  right  of  property.  It  is  his  own. 
It  inheres  in  himself,  as  do  his  eyes,  his  hands,  and 
his  feet.  It  is  peculiarly,  naturally,  of  himself,  and 
it  is  so  deeply  interwoven  into  the  structure  of  his 
being  that  man  will  defend  it  with  his  life.  He  will 
fight  for  it.  A  man  will  give  you  five  hundred  dc'- 
lars,  but  he  will  not  permit  you  to  take  from  him  :'.Vv: 
cents  that  belongs  to  him.  This  sense  of  prop  rty 
right  is  woven  into  the  whole  fabric  of  the  civi)  zed 
structure.  It  is  found  among  savage  tribes  as  .yell. 
The  exigency  of  having  all  things  in  common  and 
dividing  things  among  them  according  to  their  wants 
was  for  a  time  only.  It  was  not  a  foundation  z'  a 
new  religious  community.  It  is  a  plan  which  never 
has  worked  and  never  can  be  made  to  work  until 
man  has  been  changed  into  another  kind  of  being 

141 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  is  translated  to  an  existence  where  he  is  not 
thrown  upon  his  own  resources  and  no  longer  has 
personal  obligations  to  meet  with  money. 

If  his  property  is  to  be  taken  away  from  him,  it 
must  be  done  by  some  one  who  is  stronger  than  he ; 
and  if  it  is  sanctioned  by  a  community,  it  must  be 
by  those  who  can  make  that  community  stronger 
than  by  those  who  resist  this  new  doctrine  of  prop- 
erty rights.  And  that  will  last  only  until  the 
strength  is  reversed  or  another  assertion  of  right  is 
enforced.  The  same  spirit  that  robbed  to-day's 
rich  will  rob  to-morrow's  robbers.  You  may  change 
the  dollars,  but  you  cannot  change  the  nature  of 
man.  It  is  the  same  nature  in  the  robbers,  so  far  as 
acquisition  is  concerned,  that  you  find  in  the  robbed, 
however  they  differ  in  their  sense  of  the  right  of 
possession.  It  is  difficult  to  appreciate  the  difference 
between  a  highwayman  and  a  socialist  or  Bolshevik 
who  organizes  to  rob  communities  of  their  proper- 
ties. In  both  cases  it  is  an  effort  to  get  something 
wi  h  nothing,  and  to  get  something  in  which  there  is 
no  nherent  or  acquired  ownership.  In  one  case  it  is 
one  robber,  in  the  other  it  is  a  band  of  robbers.  We 
call  them  bandits.  If  a  property  is  held  unjustly, 
the  world  has  never  recognized  that  it  is  safe  for 
men  who  claim  that  it  belongs  to  them  to  go  and 
get  it.  It  must  be  determined  by  processes  of  law. 
Fundamental  to  this  whole  question  is  a  very  old 
law,  forbidding  a  man  to  covet  even  so  humble  an 
object  as  his  neighbor's  ass  or  so  high  and  sacred  a 

142 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 


| 

j 


person  as  his  wife.  Bolshevism,  which  is  taking  an- 
other name  in  this  country,  insists  upon  the  whole 
list,  from  the  ass  to  the  wife.  You  say,  "O  no  I 
We  admit  no  family  right  and  claim  nothing  but  un- 
divided money."  Why  not?  The  man  owns  both 
the  ass  and  the  wife.  The  law  gives  him  both  as  it 
gives  her  both.  You  abhor  taking  the  wife,  but 
Bolshevism,  from  which  this  beautiful  new  division 
is  being  enforced,  makes  no  distinction.  The  logic  is 
inevitable.  If  your  neighbor's  wife  suits  you  better, 
take  her.  If  your  neighbor's  horse  suits  you  better, 
take  him.  If  your  neighbor's  house  suits  you  better, 
move  into  it.  He  has  nothing  that  you  want  which 
e  has  a  right  to  keep.  Property  is  indefinite.  It  is 
in  the  land,  in  mines,  in  fields,  in  forests.  No  man 
has  a  right  to  any  more  of  it  than  you  have !  If  he 
has  got  it,  it  is  because  he  got  there  first  and  has  no 
right  to  hold  it  away  from  you  because  you  were  not 
born  first.  Let  there  be  a  new  deal  all  around  and 
let  us  all  start  new,  and  those  who  won't  divide, 
shoot  them ! 

In  other  words,  there  is  no  property,  take  it. 
What  is  it  after  they  take  it,  and  what  do  they  want 
of  it?  It  would  divide  very  small  if  it  were  divided 
among  all  the  peoples  of  our  country,  and  smaller  if 
the  area  were  extended.  What  would  be  done  with 
it  then?  Would  every  man  have  the  same?  The 
same  enterprises?  Perhaps  there  would  not  be  any 
enterprises!  Same  expense  of  families?  Perhaps 
they  all  will  be  the  same  number.  Possibly  they 

143 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

would  be  assessed  according  to  their  number.  The 
same  tastes  and  personal  expenses?  There  should 
be  no  different  tastes.  Perhaps  what  was  left  over 
would  be  assessed  and  be  taken  around  to  the  com- 
mon storehouse.  If  anyone  was  overfed  and  over- 
clothed,  and  was  extravagant  beyond  what  was  left 
for  him,  why,  shoot  him ! 

What  about  public  enterprises?  Was  there  ever 
common  intelligence  sufficient  to  invest  the  world's 
capital?  Perhaps  a  few  socialists  of  extraordinary 
capacity  for  finance  could  do  it  for  the  crowd. 
What  better  would  that  be  than  the  present  arrange- 
ment in  which  a  few  do  it,  and  take  any  and  all  into 
the  company  who  have  anything  with  which  to  buy? 
Would  the  control  be  any  easier  if  there  were  un- 
satisfactory results?  How  is  it  working  in  Russia? 
When  you  try  to  shoot  the  upper  ten  of  the  new  deal 
the  shooting  is  not  so  easy.  But  where  is  the  capital 
coming  from,  when  the  distribution  is  all  made  on 
the  community  plan  according  to  the  sustenance  in 
which  all  shall  live  with  abundance  ?  There  must  be 
an  assessment,  must  there  not,  and  a  new  redistribu- 
tion? How  long  would  it  be,  if  all  things  were 
made  equal  to-day,  before  some  would  have  more 
and  some  less  and  some  most  and  some  nothing?  It 
is  a  beautiful  theory,  but  tested  by  the  practical 
affairs  demanded  by  a  real  world  and  not  by  a 
Utopia,  it  would  fall  to  pieces  and  disappear  like 
the  vapors  that  hang  beautifully  along  the  valleys 
until  Old  Sol  comes  along  and  sets  the  world  at 

144 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 


work.  The  great  enterprises  of  this  earth  are  not 
set  in  motion  by  need  nor  possibilities.  They  begin 
to  move  as  some  one  mind,  some  one  energy  moves 
out  ahead  of  his  fellows  with  what  he  is  and  what  he 
has.  He  inspires  others  with  as  much  or  more  than 
he  has  to  join  him.  Columbus  started  alone  and 
came  near  being  thrown  overboard  by  the  crowd 
that  could  not  see  with  his  courage  and  faith.  They 
did  put  Hendrick  Hudson  and  his  boy  adrift  in  a 
small  boat  to  perish  in  the  bay  that  afterward  was 
given  his  name  by  men  great  enough  to  appreciate 
him  and  know  him-.  All  the  great  discoveries  and 
inventions  have  been  made  by  individuals  working 
on  the  plan  of  individualism,  men  with  their  heads 
and  shoulders  above  the  common  multitude. 

There  was  one  enterprise  that  is  an  exception. 
Everybody  seemed  to  join  in  it.  That  was  the 
tower  of  Babel.  But  before  they  got  through  one 
man  did  not  know  what  another  was  thinking  about, 
and  they  scattered  before  their  tower  reached 
heaven,  and  the  name  of  the  enterprise  became  a 
synonym  for  the  confusion  of  tongues,  because  all 
tried  to  give  their  opinions  at  the  same  time !  That 
is  to  what  we  would  revert  and  backward  to 
monkeys  in  the  coconut  palms  and  cave  dwellers,  and 
start  over  again  with  one  cave  man  in  one  cave  and 
one  family.  The  supreme  folly  of  such  a  theory  is 
too  easy  of  demonstration  for  it  seriously  to  threaten 
the  order  of  things  by  which  all  progress  has  been 
made  from  the  beginning  of  time.  More  than  ever 

145 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

in  its  history  the  world  demands  individuals  for 
leadership,  backed  by  the  confidence  and  support  of 
thousands  who  are  not  leaders  but  who  are  mighty 
followers  and  whose  following  has  always  made 
great  and  safe  leadership  possible. 

When  you  start  out  to  have  all  things  in  common, 
you  not  only  must  take  the  uncommon  things  from 
the  uncommon  men  by  force,  which  is  robbery,  or 
by  forced  law,  which  is  bandit  robbery,  but  you  run 
against  a  natural  law  of  the  Almighty,  written  in 
human  nature  as  universally  as  any  human  trait  you 
can  name.  Acquisitiveness  is  natural  to  the  baby 
that  reaches  out  its  hands  for  a  rubber  ball  or  for  its 
father's  gold  watch.  Ownership  starts  the  first  fight 
between  two  boys  for  a  marble.  There  is  no 
pleasure  in  having  another  own  things  for  you.  It 
implies  incapacity.  Only  a  few  days  ago  a  man  won 
a  fight  which  has  been  in  the  courts  for  years,  over 
his  title  to  his  property.  It  was  his  and  it  was  well 
invested,  and  he  received  his  dividends  from  its 
earnings  regularly.  He  had  no  objection  to  the 
trustee.  But  it  was  his,  and  for  that  reason  he  in- 
sisted upon  its  possession,  and  would  have  died 
fighting  for  it.  And  those  who  contended  that  he 
was  mentally  incapacitated,  and  gave  that  as  a 
reason  for  withholding  his  property  and  managing  it 
for  him  and  had  the  authority  of  the  courts  with 
them  for  years,  never  presented  his  ceaseless  contest 
over  his  property  as  an  evidence  of  his  insanity.  It 
is  not  possible  to  imagine  soundly  developed  men 

146 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

and  women  without  this  trait  of  character.  The 
conclusive  evidence  that  they  are  not  sound  would  be 
that  they  lack  it.  We  have  developed  it  from  the 
elements  of  our  creation.  The  vindication  of  our 
source  in  an  Infinite  Wisdom  is  in  what  we  find 
within  ourselves,  and  not  the  least  of  these  is  in  our 
capability  to  acquire  our  livelihood  without  being  fed 
by  the  quails  or  from  a  spontaneous  manna,  and  the 
intensity  with  which  our  possessions  are  held  as  our 
own.  It  is  of  our  personality.  Great  personalities 
are  never  behind  the  Bolshevists'  and  socialists'  plan 
of  robbery,  nor  the  ignorance  of  their  blind  efforts 
to  reverse  the  order  of  human  nature  which  has  be- 
come intense  with  the  assertion  of  the  larger  man- 
hood. How  have  these  collective  highwaymen  got 
along  when  they  placed  themselves  in  the  place  of 
those  whose  property  is  to  be  divided?  Are  they  in 
the  list  of  division  upward?  It  would  make  a  differ- 
ence if  they  came  in  the  scale  of  taking  away  half 
they  have  for  the  common  good.  They  answer 
that  by  protesting  their  taxes.  You  run  against  the 
law  of  human  nature  again.  uThe  poor  man's  all 
is  as  dear  to  him  as  the  rich  man's  all  is  to  him." 
The  poor  man's  little  is  as  much  a  treasure  to  him 
as  the  rich  man's  millions  are  to  him.  Put  the 
test  of  this  idiotic  scheme  upon  the  man  who  has 
fifteen  thousand  dollars  in  the  bank,  and  show  him 
that  the  division  will  give  each  man  five  hundred 
dollars,  and  I  venture  that  he  will  not  attend  the 
next  communistic  meeting.  It  will  make  a  decided 

147 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

difference,  and  in  the  experiment  you  will  get  a  re- 
liable test  of  the  sincerity  of  the  theory  that  spins 
finely  until  you  strike  the  man  who  scales  down  and 
not  up.  Then  there  is  a  knot  in  the  thread  and  it 
tangles  and  breaks.  The  robber  theory  works  out 
so  long  as  you  work  it  upon  those  who  have  things 
you  covet.  It  violates  God's  law  and  man's  own 
nature  as  it  came  from  God. 

Perhaps  it  has  not  occurred  to  these  new  theorists 
of  the  common  good  that  the  only  value  which  prop- 
erty has  they  propose  to  take  from  it,  and  that  by 
dividing  it  and  assigning  it  to  those  who  will  not 
work,  but  clamor  to  be  supported  by  what  other  men 
have  earned  by  brain  or  muscle  or  both,  they  destroy 
values  utterly,  and  that  the  time  would  soon  come 
when  there  would  be  nothing  to  divide.  The  value 
of  property  under  the  old  plan  is  that  it  is  a  man's 
own  and  that  he  can  add  to  it  and  improve  it,  and 
that  he  may  use  it  to  protect  his  family  from  future 
want.  They  do  not  need  to  eat  at  a  common  crib, 
apportionments  made  upon  a  scale  from  unproduc- 
tive funds.  They  can  use  it  to  promote  the  public 
interests  in  education,  religion,  and  philanthropy, 
and  it  is  themselves  who  acquire  it  and  enter  into  the 
use  of  it.  It  is  the  only  inspiration  that  comes  from 
property.  Men  never  have  been  contented  with  it 
in  any  other  form,  whether  the  Spartans  or  the  early 
disciples  and  followers  of  the  Christian  faith.  They 
have  always  reverted  to  the  present  plan  and  man- 
aged its  abuses  in  ways  that  intelligent  construction 

148 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

of  laws  and  practice  have  provided.  They  have  re- 
vised, but  not  destroyed.  What  is  it  expected  to  ac- 
complish by  any  different  plan?  The  restlessness 
seems  to  come  along  the  line  of  those  who  stand  for 
the  least  under  the  present  plan  in  their  community 
in  the  activities  of  their  fellow  men.  Has  anyone 
seen  the  possessor  championing  a  new  order  of 
things,  or  are  they  using  what  they  have  in  oppor- 
tunity or  capital,  be  it  muscle  or  money,  to  improve 
their  condition?  The  specimens  of  discontent  and 
malcontent  are  the  strongest  argument  against  the 
plans  of  the  thieves.  Are  they  the  men  whom  a 
community  seeks  to  manage  its  financial  affairs,  or 
who  are  found  in  the  great  enterprises  that  want  new 
executive  ability,  more  water,  better  and  cheaper 
lights,  improved  transits,  and  sanitation?  For  what 
do  these  refuse  of  mankind  propose  to  use  the 
wealth  that  is  not  theirs?  What  better  things  are 
they  to  do?  What  more  intelligent  and  efficient 
things?  Are  they  going  to  put  in  one  day  of  fruit- 
ful, uncomplaining  work?  Are  they  going  to  pay  a 
tax  when  they  get  other  men's  money?  Will  they 
run  the  railroads  and  pay  the  deficits  with  other 
men's  money  and  their  own  brains  that  never  earned 
money  of  their  own?  Does  it  not  make  your  blood 
run  hot  to  think  of  the  preposterous  insolence  of  this 
proposed  revolution?  It  does  not,  because  you 
treat  it  as  a  joke.  It  seems  so,  or  it  did  a  few  weeks 
ago,  when  a  correspondent  of  one  of  the  papers  of 
my  town  notified  me  that  if  I  did  not  take  care  my 

149 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

"elegant  home  would  be  taken  away  from  me  and 
some  poor  man  would  be  living  in  it!"  Why  one! 
Why  not  a  tenement  full  if  you  want  to  create  the 
tenement  kind.  Did  the  papers  make  no  reply  be- 
cause they  thought  it  a  joke!  It  did  seem  so,  but 
when  men  begin  to  joke  with  God's  laws,  written  or 
incarnated  in  men,  they  become  dangerous. 

It  seems  to  you  incredible  that  such  a  state  of 
things  can  become  possible.  But  what  other  prac- 
tical results  can  follow  the  logic  of  such  theories  as 
those  of  a  Debs  and  his  kith,  well  known  to  our 
country  at  large,  who  have  one  or  more  outspoken 
representatives  in  every  considerable  town  and 
secret  sympathizers  in  some  of  our  colleges?  It  is  not 
greater  freedom  of  thought  that  is  being  advocated. 
That  is  not  lacking.  It  is  a  readjustment  of  incomes 
by  taking  from  those  who  have  and  giving  it  to  those 
who  have  not.  No  provision  is  to  be  made  in  the 
plan  for  those  who  are  impoverished  by  having  what 
they  have  taken  away  from  them.  Our  I.  W.  W.  is 
Russian  Bolshevism.  It  is  the  roots  from  which  it 
sprung.  It  is  the  logical  conclusion  of  Bolshevism. 
What  is  being  done  in  Russia  to-day  the  I.  W.  W. 
agitators  would  do  if  they  dared  venture  their  in- 
famous game  here.  As  preparatory  work  their 
propaganda  is  going  forward  all  over  the  country. 
Driven  out  of  far  Western  cities  by  brave  executives 
and  citizens,  it  invades  others,  or  returns  under 
other  forms  and  offers  clandestinely  to  any  and  all 
who  are  discontented  with  their  lot  and  station  the 

150 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

inequality  of  property  as  the  cause  of  their  oppres- 
sive burdens.  They  heard  it  in  the  saloons.  It  is 
an  insidious  doctrine  taught  in  their  unions.  The 
ranging  discontent  with  good  wages  and  short  days 
is  the  increasing  spread  and  propaganda  of  our 
Bolshevism  and  I.  W.  W.  ism  under  prudent  names 
and  by  secret  and  concealed  methods.  Its  blow  is 
aimed  at  property,  all  kinds  of  property — private, 
corporate,  and  public;  in  investments,  manufacture, 
and  commerce,  and  public  improvements  and  fran- 
chises. And  it  promises  no  improvement  in  invest- 
ment or  manufacture.  It  proposes  to  divide  with 
the  unsuccessful,  who  are  not  likely  to  succeed  with 
other  men's  money.  It  means  a  reign  of  ruin,  trains 
standing  on  rusted  tracks,  factories  with  smokeless 
chimneys,  stores  with  unhinged  doors — a  world  of 
loafers :  manhood  gone,  property  gone,  education 
gone — tramps  everywhere. 

If  that  condition  cannot  exist  in  our  country,  it 
will  be  because  we  are  too  deeply  rooted  in  the 
blessings  of  American  freedom,  too  firmly  grounded 
in  nationalism,  and  are  too  universally  prosperous, 
from  the  workingman  with  his  cottage  home  to 
all  conditions  of  property  rights  and  privileges. 
But  we  are  not  secure  enough  to  pass  off  the 
present  insidious  and  fiendish  propaganda  against 
individual  ownership  as  worthy  of  our  ridi- 
cule. We  cannot  fortify  against  the  threaten- 
ing peril  as  an  ostrich  tries  to  escape  his  foes  by 
putting  his  head  in  the  sand.  It  would  take  but  a 

151 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

short  time  for  the  work  of  the  torch,  the  bomb,  and 
the  silencer  rifle.  It  would  take  much  longer  to  re- 
pair damages  than  to  prevent  them.  The  combined 
I.  W.  W.  Bolshevism  and  unions  count  upon  the  con- 
fidence of  the  American  public.  We  cry  "Peace" 
when  there  is  no  peace.  We  try  to  plan  with  safety 
to  ourselves  peace  for  the  world  against  war,  when 
in  our  midst  to-day  is  the  most  dangerous  foe  that 
has  ever  threatened  the  world.  German  militarism 
is  only  a  circumstance  compared  with  it. 

Of  peculiar  interest  is  this  whole  matter  to  my 
neighbor  the  workingman.  His  patriotism  is  an 
essential  part  of  his  religion,  and  the  feeling  of  in- 
dividual ownership — his  own  by  the  right  of  his 
intelligent  and  skilled  labor — is  a  fundamental  ele- 
ment in  his  civilized  life.  There  is  no  promise  in 
communism  even  if  upon  sound  principles,  but  a 
general  charity  to  the  incompetent  by  age  or  poverty. 
It  is  infinitely  more  honorable  than  stealing  and 
murdering,  but  it  is  not  the  way  the  world  ever  has 
arranged  successfully  to  promote  the  interests  of  a 
people.  The  promise  is  in  the  dinner  pail,  the  over- 
alls, the  white  cottage,  the  children  running  along 
the  streets  to  the  public  school,  the  day  one-third  in 
faithful  labor,  one-third  in  recreation,  one-third  in 
sleep;  a  comfortable  living  with  savings,  if  a  small 
margin,  on  the  mortgage  or  in  the  savings  bank. 
The  man  owns  himself  and  what  he  secures  belongs 
to  him.  A  few  dollars  a  year  takes  care  of  acci- 
dents or  sickness  with  lost  time.  The  signs  of  thrift 

152 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

are  all  through  the  town.  The  property  is  not 
evenly  divided  and  the  brain  work  and  responsibility 
are  not  either.  But  everywhere  things  are  being 
done,  new  enterprises  are  being  started,  every  man 
that  wants  work  is  employed.  The  workingman 
is  a  partner  in  the  business.  For  what  he  puts  in  he 
is  getting  a  good  share  from  it.  The  capitalist  is 
his  friend  and  the  friend  of  his  humble  home,  and 
takes  a  business  interest,  if  no  other,  in  his  health. 

A  man  who  is  the  head  and  chief  manager  of  the 
greatest  monopoly  in  our  country,  as  he  came  down 
the  gangplank  of  the  ship  which  landed  him  from 
months  in  Europe,  uttered  a  Bolshevist  malediction : 
"The  business  magnates,  the  capitalists  will  learn 
that  they  are  not  monarchs  of  all  they  survey." 
Why  are  they  not?  Who  are  if  they  are  not?  The 
workingman  is  monarch  of  all  he  surveys;  so  are  the 
lawyer  and  the  doctor.  It  is  the  only  monarchy  we 
have  in  this  country.  Every  man  is  the  monarch  of 
himself  and  what  he  has.  So  is  the  demag6gue  who 
utters  such  a  cowardly  threat  against  the  men  who  are 
projecting  the  mighty  enterprise  of  the  land  and  who 
with  their  combined  influence  constitute  infinitely  less 
of  a  monopoly  than  does  this  potentate  who  rules 
over  crowds  of  irresponsible  men  who  threaten  with 
destruction  the  work  which  capital  has  builded  and 
who  threaten  the  very  Congress  of  the  United  States 
if  their  demands  are  refused. 

There  appeared  recently  in  Leslie's  Weekly  an 
article  by  the  Hon.  John  A.  Embry,  who  has  been 

153 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

United  States  Consul  in  different  parts  of  Russia. 
It  is  so  seldom  that  Americans  see  anything  upon  the 
subject  stated  so  authoritatively  and  so  clearly  and 
circumstantially,  that  I  have  obtained  the  consent  of 
my  friend,  Dr.  Sleicher,  editor  of  Leslie's,  to  use  it 
here.  It  substantiates  all  I  have  said  and  more  con- 
cerning the  diabolical  purposes  of  destructive  social- 
ism: 

By  far  the  greatest  surprise  Americans  returning 
from  Bolshevist  Russia  experience  upon  their  ar- 
rival in  the  United  States  is  the  hopelessly  confused 
state  of  public  opinion  on  Bolshevism  and  the  Bol- 
sheviki.  One  sees  it  everywhere.  My  friends  and 
colleagues,  who  like  myself  have  seen  service  in 
Russia  in  the  diplomatic  or  consular  service  or  other 
allied  work,  whom  I  have  met  in  the  United  States 
since  my  return  have  expressed  to  me  the  same  sur- 
prise and  wonderment  which  almost  overwhelmed 
me  upon  my  arrival.  Barring  two  possible  excep- 
tions (Raymond  Robins  of  the  Red  Cross  and 
Jerome  Davis  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.)  no  American, 
whose  parents  were  Americans  before  him,  and  who 
has  held  a  place  of  honor  or  trust  in  the  United 
States  government,  or  in  anything  else  where 
veracity  and  good  character  are  requisites,  ever  has 
returned  from  Russia  without  characterizing  the 
Bolsheviki  as  the  greatest  criminal  organization  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  Even  Colonel  Raymond  Rob- 
ins found  there  was  very  little  good  he  could  say 
for  the  Bolsheviki  when  testifying  under  oath  before 
the  United  States  Senate,  while  Mr.  Davis  to-day 
would  doubtless  deny  with  warmth  that  he  ever  felt 
any  admiration  for  the  Bolsheviki.  Yet  despite  all 

154 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 


this  the  average  man,  if  you  ask  him  what  he  thinks 
of  the  Bolsheviki,  will  say,  "I  hardly  know  what  to 
think  about  them,  the  reports  from  Russia  are  so 
conflicting." 

Why  are  reports  from  Russia  so  conflicting? 
There  is  but  one  answer.  The  reports  are  conflict- 
ing because  there  is  a  powerful  and  well-organized 
campaign  of  Bolshevist  propaganda  being  waged  in 
the  United  States.  The  papers  constantly  give  evi- 
dence of  it,  while  formerly  reputable  magazines  give 
almost  all  of  their  pages  to  it.  Both  the  parlor 
Bolshevists  and  the  other  variety  are  cooperating  in 
the  United  States  to  confuse  the  American  people  on 
the  issues  of  Bolshevism.  They  know  full  well  that 
nothing  could  injure  the  success  of  the  Bolshevist 
propaganda  in  the  United  States  like  widespread 
knowledge  among  the  mass  of  the  American  people 
of  what  Bolshevism  really  has  done  and  is  attempt- 
ing to  do  in  Russia.  Every  report  coming  from 
Russia  derogatory  to  the  Bolsheviki  (and  no  honest 
report  could  be  otherwise)  has  to  be  at  once  contra- 
dicted or  smoothed  over  by  our  parlor  Bolsheviki  in 
the  United  States.  From  time  to  time  American 
Bolsheviki  visit  Russia  and  pretend  to  make  an  in- 
vestigation of  conditions  there.  They  then  lie  in 
wait  for  the  American  who,  through  no  choice  of  his 
own,  has  lived  in  Russia  during  her  many  revolu- 
tions in  the  service  of  his  country,  and  finally  comes 
back  on  furlough  and  tells  his  friends  and  tne  press 
what  he  has  seen.  They  brand  everything  he  says 
as  being  malicious  slander  against  such  friends  of  the 
people  as  Lenine  and  Trotsky.  And  since  parlor 
Bolsheviki  happen  to  be  far  more  numerous  and 
vociferous  than  honest  Americans  who  occasionally 
arrive  from  Russia,  most  of  what  the  lone  returning 

155 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

American  has  to  say  is  lost  in  the  mass  of  lies  and 
denials  that  get  into  print  about  It.  The  same  is 
true  of  books  that  get  written  about  Bolshevist 
Russia.  To  one  book  which  describes  the  Bolshe- 
viki  as  they  are,  there  are  ten  books  which  are  writ- 
ten for  the  express  purpose  of  describing  them  as 
they  are  not. 

With  such  a  barrage  of  misrepresentations,  de- 
nials and  lies  about  soviet  or  Bolshevist  Russia,  : 
not  surprising  that  Bolshevist  propaganda  has  been 
able  to  make  headway  in  America  during  the  present 
trying  conditions  incident  to  a  world-wide  industrial 
readjustment.  However,  I  will  confess  to  being 
shocked  when  I  learned  recently  from  an  American 
of  national  prominence  that  while  on  a  tour  of  in- 
vestigation in  sixty  American  towns  and  cities,  which 
he  had  just  completed,  he  found  evidence  of  active 
Bolshevist  propaganda  in  every  one  of  these  towns, 
and  that  in  some  of  the  large  cities  he  discovered 
secret  Soviets,  organized  and  holding  regular  meet- 
ings. It  is  no  longer  correct  to  say  that  Bolshevism 
is  at  our  door ;  it  has  crossed  the  threshold. 

With  such  a  condition  facing  us  as  a  nation,  it  is 
imperative  that  public  opinion  no  longer  remain  con- 
fused on  the  issues  of  Bolshevism.  The  man  of 
education  knows  just  little  enough  about  Bolshevism 
to  cause  him  to  sneer  about  it  and  not  see  its  danger ; 
the  man  of  no  education,  who  lives  a  life  of  drudg- 
ery, with  little  or  no  hope  in  what  the  future  holds, 
knows  just  enough  about  Bolshevism  to  feel  inclined 
to  grasp  at  the  hope  of  better  things  it  holds  out  and 
not  see  the  pit  that  lies  at  his  feet. 

Defined  briefly,  a  Bolshevist  is  a  person  who  be- 
lieves in  the  immediate  overthrow  by  force  of  all 
existing  social,  political,  and  economic  institutions. 

156 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

If  we  ignore  the  writings  of  the  parlor  Bolshevik! 
which  only  serve  the  purpose  for  which  they  were 
written,  i.  e.,  to  cloud  the  whole  issue,  and  the  writ- 
ings and  public  statements  of  such  men  as  Nikolai 
Lenine,  Leon  Trotsky,  and  Eugene  V.  Debs,  it  is  not 
at  all  difficult  to  get  at  the  substance  of  the  Bol- 
shevist platform.  According  to  these  leaders,  the 
tenets  of  Bolshevism  are  as  follows: 

(1)  The  immediate  abolition  of  the  institution 
of  private  property  by  means  of  force.     All  private 
ownership  of  house,  land,  and  all  means  of  produc- 
tion must  be  immediately  abolished.     The  owners 
of  these  things,  because  of  their  exploitation  of  the 
proletariat,  shall  receive  no  compensation  for  their 
loss. 

(2)  There  shall  be  no  wages,  in  the  sense  of  one 
man  working  for  another.     The  only  wages  will  be 
those  paid  by  the  state  for  productive  labor.    There 
will  be  no  rents,  no  profits,  no  interest. 

(3)  Nationalization     of     all     industries.      The 
workingmen  shall  have  full  control  of  the  industries 
which  shall  by  nationalization  become  the  property 
of    the    whole    people.      The    distribution    of    the 
products  shall  be  attended  to  by  the  state.     "From 
every  man  according  to  his  ability,  to  every  man 
according  to  his  needs." 

(4)  The  consumers'   goods  now  in   existence — 
houses,   clothing,    food,    etc. — shall  be   divided  up 
among   the    working   class   which   produced   them. 
The  former  owners  of  these  things  shall  receive  a 
proportionate  share  only  in  case  they  join  in  good 
faith  the  cause  of  the  social  revolution. 

(5)  All  who  oppose   Bolshevism  or  the  social 
revolution,  whether  members  of  the  propertied  class 
or  not,  shall  have  no  rights  a  Bolshevist  is  bound  to 

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MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

respect.  Under  no  circumstances  shall  they  be  al- 
lowed freedom  of  press  or  association.  Those  who 
resist  the  new  social  order  by  force  must  be  put  down 
by  the  most  violent  means  possible  in  order  to  strike 
terror  to  the  hearts  of  others  who  otherwise  might 
be  led  to  follow  their  example. 

(6)  The  social  revolution  is  at  hand.  It  is 
world-wide.  To  succeed  for  long  anywhere  it  must 
succeed  everywhere.  The  revolution  means  war  to 
death  with  the  property-holding  classes.  The  slogan 
of  "Proletarians  of  all  lands  unite"  must  be  changed 
to  the  battle-cry  of  "Proletariats  of  all  lands  to 


arms." 


(7)  Family  life  and  family  ties  must  be  weak- 
ened in  every  way  possible,  because  the  family  is  the 
greatest  bulwark  of  that  iniquity  of  iniquities,  the  in- 
stitution of  private  property.  This  is  to  be  ac- 
complished by  extremely  lax  marriage  and  divorce 
laws,  public  sanction  of  "free  love,"  or,  if  the  popu- 
lation can  be  induced  to  stand  for  it,  the  "National- 
ization of  women." 

When  the  Bolsheviki  overthrew  the  Kerensky 
government  in  November,  1917,  and  Lenine  de- 
clared the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat,  Russia 
entered  upon  a  social  experiment,  the  aim  of  which 
is  embraced  in  the  political,  social,  and  economic 
planks  of  the  Bolshevist  platform  I  have  just  out- 
lined. Since  that  time  many  Americans  have  re- 
turned from  Russia  and  told  of  the  utter  economic 
ruin  that  has  overtaken  the  country,  the  orgy  of 
bloodshed  and  terror  that  the  leaders  of  the  revolu- 
tion have  instituted,  and  the  indescribable  sufferings 
that  have  been  inflicted  upon  all  members  of  the 
propertied  class  in  Russia. 

Ambassador  David  R.  Francis,  who  was  at  Petro- 

158 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

grad  when  the  Bolsheviki  dispersed  the  Russian 
Constituent  Assembly,  and  who  had  ample  oppor- 
tunity of  seeing  the  Soviets  at  work,  while  testifying 
before  the  United  States  Senate  about  the  Bolsheviki 
said:  "They  are  against  all  government.  Their 
decrees  call  for  the  disruption  of  family  life.  Their 
policies  are  such  as  will  lead  us  back  into  barbarism." 

Colonel  E.  E.  Teusler,  American  Red  Cross  Com- 
missioner to  Siberia,  after  making  a  trip  to  the 
Siberian  front  last  winter  and  witnessing  the  effect  of 
Bolshevist  rule  in  Siberian  villages  near  the  Ural 
Mountains,  declared:  "Not  one  good  word  can  be 
said  for  Bolshevism." 

Roger  C.  Tredwell,  American  Consul  at  Tash- 
kend,  who  returned  from  southern  Russia  via  Mos- 
cow and  Petrograd  in  May,  stated  recently  before 
the  Russian  Economic  League  in  New  York  city, 
that  in  Bolshevist  Russia  the  factories  are  closed,  the 
railways  are  in  a  hopeless  condition,  the  people  are 
idle,  hungry,  ill-clothed  and  given  over  to  all  kinds 
of  lawlessness  with  little  or  no  restraint  over  them. 

The  guard  under  which  he  traveled  through 
Russia  in  company  with  two  British  Red  Cross 
nurses  instructed  the  two  nurses  not  under  any 
circumstances  to  attempt  to  take  walks  outside  their 
railway  carriage,  as  at  the  stations  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  protect  them.  Consul  Tredwell  also  told 
how  a  Bolshevist  minister  of  commerce  and  industry 
in  a  conversation  with  him  one  day  pointed  to  the 
smokeless  factory  chimneys  and  said:  "These  smoke- 
less chimneys  spell  the  doom  of  our  social  revolu- 
tion. The  people  cannot  be  induced  to  work." 

Immediately  prior  to  my  return  to  the  United 
States  in  June,  I  visited,  in  company  with  two  Ameri- 
can newspaper  correspondents,  several  towns  and 

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MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

villages  in  that  portion  of  eastern  Russia  which  had 
been  recently  taken  from  the  Bolsheviki  by  the 
anti-Bolshevist  forces-  of  Admiral  Kolchak.  The 
story  of  the  conditions  we  found  in  these  cities 
has  already  been  widely  published  in  the  news- 
papers. I  only  wish  to  confirm  here  in  a  signed 
article  what  has  been  already  published.  Bielebei 
is  a  town  of  about  ten  thousand  inhabitants,  and  is 
a  county  seat  of  Bielebei  County,  Ufa  Govern- 
ment, eastern  Russia.  It  had  been  Bolshevist  terri- 
tory twice,  Bolshevism  first  reaching  the  town  in  the 
spring  of  1918.  It  was  cleared  of  Bolsheviki  by  the 
Czecho-Slovaks  during  the  summer  of  that  year  and 
fell  again  into  Bolshevist  hands  in  December,  when 
the  Czechs  withdrew  from  the  Siberian  front  after 
the  signing  of  the  European  armistice.  According 
to  the  accounts  given  by  three  judges  of  the  Bielebei 
county  court,  who  were  all  Socialists,  and  who  had 
felt  safe  to  remain  in  the  city,  as  well  as  a  number  of 
other  trustworthy  eyewitnesses,  the  Bolshevist  army 
which  entered  Bielebei  last  December  was  nothing 
more  than  an  armed  rabble  of  some  fifteen  hundred 
men,  criminals,  adventurers,  and  the  riffraff  of  the 
lowest  Russian  classes.  They  looted  the  town  as 
they  entered  it.  All  the  criminals  in  the  county  jail 
were  immediately  released,  while  the  members  of 
the  local  county  government,  who  were  believed  to 
be  opposed  to  Bolshevism,  were  taken  out  and  shot 
without  any  form  of  trial.  About  fifteen  hundred 
of  the  more  intelligent  people  of  Bielebei  fled  at  the 
approach  of  the  Bolsheviki,  but  many  of  them  were 
caught  and  killed.  The  evening  following  their 
arrival  in  the  city  the  Bolsheviki  held  a  monster 
meeting  in  the  town  hall,  at  which  local  criminals 
released  from  prison  attended.  The  more  voluble 

160 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

leaders  addressed  their  comrades  after  the  manner 
of  I.  W.  W.  agitators,  and  those  who  made  the  most 
pleasing  speeches  were  elected  viva  voce  to  the 
various  commissariats  which  were  to  be  organized. 
The  county  court  and  county  government  were  de- 
clared abolished,  and  the  following  committees  were 
formed:  The  Executive  Committee,  made  up  of  the 
most  daring  and  unscrupulous,  to  which  all  other 
committees  were  subordinate;  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal,  with  its  so-called  court  for  the  punishment 
of  political  crimes,  i.  e.,  counter  revolution,  specula- 
tion, and  sabotage;  the  Extraordinary  Investigating 
Committee,  possessing  the  power  of  executing  with- 
out trial  any  person  believed  to  be  guilty  of  counter- 
revolutionary sympathies;  and  the  Council  of 
Domestic  Economy,  charged  with  the  task  of  listing 
and  requisitioning  all  private  property  in  the  district, 
for  the  purpose  of  dividing  up  the  same  among  the 
proletariat.  The  last-named  commissariat  was  the 
least  efficient  of  all,  as  its  commissar  and  his  assist- 
ants were  too  lazy  and  too  dishonest  to  do  more  than 
fill  their  own  pockets  and  issue  orders  for  this  and 
that  piece  of  property  desired  by  their  friends.  The 
Revolutionary  Tribunal  and  the  Extraordinary  In- 
vestigating Committee  vied  with  each  other  in  exe- 
cuting people  charged  with  the  crime  of  counter- 
revolution, i.  e.,  anti-Bolshevism.  The  president  of 
the  Executive  Committee  shared  in  this  orgy  of 
bloodshed.  He  had  the  president  of  the  county 
government,  who  was  ill  in  the  hospital,  brought 
before  him  in  an  invalid  chair  and  shot  him  dead 
with  his  own  hand  in  the  public  square.  He  likewise 
shot  personally  a  number  of  other  people  against 
whom  he  bore  some  grudge.  One  day  sixteen  host- 
ages were  brought  to  Bielebei  from  Ufa,  a  city  near 

161 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

by,  and  placed  in  the  jail.  Soon  thereafter,  the  jail 
being  overcrowded,  these  sixteen  unfortunate  people 
were  taken  out  and  shot  in  the  public  square,  and 
their  bodies  thrown  into  the  little  river  which  runs 
through  the  town.  The  bodies  were  later  recovered 
by  the  townspeople  and  given  proper  burial. 
Among  the  victims  was  a  seventeen-year-old  high 
school  girl  of  Ufa,  whose  parents  came  to  Bielebei, 
identified  her  body,  and  carried  it  away  with  them. 

The  girls  of  the  Bielebei  high  school  were  made  to 
wash  the  barracks  and  filthy  wearing  apparel  of  the 
Bolshevist  soldiers,  receiving  for  their  labor  only 
blows  and  curses,  or,  if  the  girl  happened  to  be 
pretty,  insults  of  worse  nature.  The  boys  of  the 
high  school  were  made  to  work  on  the  streets  with- 
out pay.  Those  among  them  who  dared  to  protest 
or  were  suspected  of  planning  to  escape  and  join 
Admiral  Kolchak's  army  were  taken  out  and  shot 
without  any  ado. 

So  terrible  and  strange  were  the  stories  told  us 
that  our  minds  were  incapable  of  visualizing  the 
scenes  that  must  have  been  enacted  during  the  Bol- 
sheviki  occupation  of  this  Russian  town.  My  com- 
panions were  frankly  skeptical.  Before  the  day 
closed  all  our  skepticism  had  vanished. 

We  were  returning  to  our  train  to  partake  of  a 
late  luncheon  when  our  attention  was  attracted  by  a 
crowd  of  excited  townspeople  making  their  way  to  a 
nearby  wood.  Upon  inquiry  we  learned  that  a  large 
number  of  victims  of  the  Bolsheviki  had  just  been 
discovered,  supposed  to  have  been  murdered  during 
the  very  night  that  they  evacuated  the  town,  and 
these  anxious  people  were  intent  on  learning  the  fate 
of  missing  friends  and  relatives.  Taking  our 
cameras  with  us  we  followed  the  wake  of  the  crowd. 

162 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PROPERTY 

In  a  few  minutes  we  were  standing  with  a  grief- 
stricken  group  of  people  on  the  edge  of  a  slight  ex- 
cavation and  with  them  gazing  down  on  a  score  of 
murdered  men  and  women  whose  mutilated  bodies 
had  suddenly  been  revealed  by  the  melting  snow. 
The  topmost  figure  on  this  heap  of  mangled  dead 
was  the  corpse  of  a  young  girl  just  blooming  into 
womanhood.  Her  left  breast — exposed — was  ter- 
ribly torn  by  gunshot ;  her  left  arm,  with  its  graceful 
curves,  was  bare  and  lay  across  her  bosom,  and  we 
noted  that  the  third  finger  had  been  amputated  at 
the  second  joint,  no  doubt  for  the  ring  that  had  en- 
circled it. 

.  Wishing  to  spare  the  feelings  of  the  older  and 
more  deeply  affected  persons  present,  I  addressed 
myself  to  an  intelligent-looking  boy  about  fifteen 
years  of  age,  and  inquired  what  caused  the  murder 
of  these  people.  His  reply  was  laconic,  but  illu- 
minating, "Bolsheviki  dieol,"  which  translated  liter- 
ally means  "Bolsheviki  work." 


163 


CHAPTER  VIII 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

IF  you  listen  with  the  ears  which  the  demagogues 
and  the  ignorant  agitators  want  you  to  use,  and  if 
you  do  your  thinking  with  the  ears  which  he  is 
anxious  to  fill,  you  will  get  the  impression  that  our 
working  people  are  being  ground  down  under  the 
merciless  heel  of  the  tyrant  capitalist.  Few  students 
of  economics  look  at  the  other  side  of  the  question 
and  appreciate  losses  that  capital  has  suffered  and 
the  insurmountable  difficulties  it  has  had  to  face  in 
the  last  generation  because  of  the  unreasonable  de- 
mands which  labor  has  increasingly  made  beyond  the 
income  of  the  world's  business  to  pay  out  of  the 
profits  of  the  business.  Labor  has  forced  a  reduc- 
tion of  the  hours  of  the  workingman,  and  to  a 
certain  measure  it  was  doubtless  best  for  labor  and 
for  business.  But  the  laborer  wanted  at  once  more 
for  his  short  hours  than  he  received  for  the  long 
ones.  Somebody  had  to  pay  for  those  two  lost 
hours.  Should  business  pay  the  whole  bill?  That 
would  depend  upon  whether  business  was  yielding 
as  much  in  eight  hours  as  it  did  in  ten  hours,  and 
that  would  depend  upon  whether  the  men  did  as 
much  in  the  eight  hours.  It  was  said  that  they 
would.  The  evidences  are,  in  many  cases,  that  they 

164 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

did  not.  As  we  have  shown  in  a  preceding  chapter, 
at  once  there  was  an  increase  in  the  cost  of  articles 
which  receive  only  eight  hours  work,  and  the  articles 
were  bought  in  the  workingman's  home,  and  paid 
for  by  him.  Then  began  the  race  between  increase 
of  cost  for  manufactured  articles  and  wages  of  eight- 
hour  workers,  and  the  workers,  up  to  date,  seem  to 
have  somewhat  the  better  of  the  contest.  In  a 
period  of  a  dozen  years  the  wages  of  the  working- 
man  increased  about  twice  as  fast  as  the  per  cent 
increase  of  the  cost  of  articles  of  home  living.  In 
some  callings  there  has  not  been  a  year  through  a 
period  of  fifteen  years  that  the  workingman's  wages 
have  not  been  increased.  It  seems  to  have  become 
an  infatuation  with  him,  and  he  thinks  that  any  year 
which  has  not  seen  a  threat  or  a  strike  and  an  in- 
crease of  wages  is  a  poor  year.  The  question  will 
force  itself  upon  the  public  mind  that  somewhere 
there  must  be  a  limit.  Soon  it  ought  to  be  the  busi- 
ness man's  turn  to  have  one  year  of  uninterrupted 
work  for  his  factory.  He  should  have  at  least  time 
enough  in  some  year  to  adjust  himself  to  those 
swiftly  changing  cost  conditions.  It  is  about  time 
for  the  public  mind  to  stop  the  foolish  sympathy 
with  the  workingman  who  for  fifteen  years  has 
shown  that  he  is  fully  able  to  take  care  of  himself, 
and  ask  him  if  he  will  not  help  us  to  buy  our  shoes 
for  less  than  twenty  dollars  a  pair.  The  prices  have 
shifted  from  the  manufacturer's  hands  to  the  skilled 
laborer's  hands.  The  dictator  of  American  busi- 

165 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ness  is  your  neighbor  and  mine  who  every  year  says, 
"Pay  me  more  for  less  work." 

One  of  the  greatest  economic  blessings  to  the  so- 
called  common  people  is  the  corporation,  a  body  of 
men  organized  and  authorized  by  law  to  do  busi- 
ness and  to  act  as  one  man.  It  has  sometimes  been 
abused,  but  as  now  safeguarded  it  is  the  securest 
form  of  savings  with  returns  in  dividends  and  the 
safest  transfer  of  property  from  one  generation  to 
another  that  has  ever  been  devised.  It  has  con- 
tributed enormously  to  the  workingman  by  project- 
ing vast  enterprises  like  railways,  the  barge  canal, 
and  the  construction  of  immense  water  reservoirs 
and  manufacturing  communities.  Those  who  op- 
pose them  are  ignorant  or  attempt  to  use  their  as- 
saults to  make  capital  with  the  ignorant  and  easily 
prejudiced. 

The  corporation  serves  the  workingman  more 
than  any  other  class  of  men.  It  has  done  more  to 
improve  his  home  and  to  create  for  him  independ- 
ence than  any  other  form  of  human  endeavor  of  a 
strictly  economic  character.  That  it  has  been  made 
or  used  to  rob  the  poor,  to  wreck  railways,  and 
establish  monopolies  is  absurd  in  the  extreme. 
There  is  nothing  great  and  good  that  has  not  been 
counterfeited  and  abused.  But  the  progress  of  the 
country  dates  its  greatest  developments  from  the 
time  men  found  a  way  of  handling  the  greatest 
enterprises  by  an  association  of  individuals  and  in- 
vestments as  one  man.  It  offers  great  advantages 

166 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

to  the  workingman  by  putting  into  his  hand  the 
possibility  of  investment  in  the  largest  enterprises  of 
the  country. 

We  hear  much  of  what  the  coal  employers,  the 
railway  magnates,  and  what  "pirates"  of  big  busi- 
ness are  doing  with  the  people's  money.  It  is  a 
singular  fact  that  tens  of  thousands  of  the  owners 
of  the  stock  of  great  railways  like  the  New  York 
Central  and  the  Pennsylvania  are  men  of  small 
means  and  women  with  modest  savings  and  clerks  in 
the  stores  and  banks.  They  own  millions  of  dollars 
of  these  properties,  and  they  are  safer,  notwith- 
standing the  agitators  of  strikes  and  government 
ownership,  than  any  other  forms  of  investment  they 
can  make.  Especially  is  this  true  of  the  bonds  of 
such  corporations. 

That  laborer  is  deceived  to  his  hurt  who  allows 
himself  to  antagonize  the  great  things  of  America. 
They  are  conceived  by  great  thoughts.  They  are 
vindicated  by  the  immense  things  they  have  done  for 
the  land.  Their  by-products  dwarf  the  world's  old 
time  enterprises  when  all  that  the  rich  could  do  was 
to  pile  their  gold  up  in  vaults  and  iron-bound  chests. 
The  later  life  of  the  world  received  its  great  impulse 
when  capitalists  combined  to  do  things  and  took  the 
workingmen  into  partnership.  The  workingman  is 
not  a  serf  any  more.  He  is  not  a  servant.  He  is 
not  a  menial.  He  is  a  partner  in  the  world's  great- 
est affairs.  And  if  he  has  power  of  thought,  of  in- 
ventive genius,  if  he  is  a  discoverer,  the  world's  open 

167 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

gates  are  now  swinging  out  before  him.  It  all  de- 
pends upon  himself.  He  can  destroy  business  and 
destroy  himself  with  it.  He  has  the  large  ad- 
vantage as  never  before  that  invested  business  has 
made  for  him.  It  was  coming  to  him  out  of  the 
logic  of  events.  He  can  hurry  it  and  overhurry  it. 
The  steel  business  is  a  case  in  hand.  For  fifteen 
years  every  year  but  one  has  seen  an  increase  of 
wages.  This  has  come  principally  to  prevent  strikes, 
and  the  strike  furor  has  doubtless  been  due  in  no 
small  degree  to  the  immense  fortunes  being  made  by 
investors  in  the  business.  But  the  effect  upon  busi- 
ness and  labor  in  general  is  harmful.  One  highly 
favored  manufacturer  cannot  act  alone  upon  local 
demands.  The  great  industrial  bodies  are  members 
one  of  another,  and  the  great  practical  question 
which  perhaps  we  cannot  expect  the  average  man  to 
put  to  the  front  is,  "What  of  the  general  good?" 
And  that  question  is  made  up  of  particulars.  The 
highest  advantage  to  the  workingman  is  not  always 
when  the  greatest  wage  is  ,paid.  That  is  an  easy 
political  economy.  But  a  man's  advantages  and 
personal  interests  involve  far  more.  That  is  a  small 
measure  of  the  man. 

Were  the  principles  of  our  fathers  right?  Were 
they  fundamental  and  eternal,  or  was  it  all  a  mis- 
take? 'Is  Bolshevism,  or  socialism,  which  is  now 
budding  under  the  name  of  Unionism,  better  than 
the  Magna  Charta  or  than  the  American  Consti- 
tution? Is  the  tribal  life  better  than  the  national 

168 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

life?  Is  wild  communism  better  than  individual  re- 
sponsibility and  privilege?  Would  the  world  be 
better  off  to  divide  up  its  mass  of  property  upon  a 
universal  plan  because  the  distribution  is  now  un- 
equal and  unfair?  How  long  would  it  stay  so? 
Does  it  not  all  go  back  upon  creation?  The  plan 
that  is  going  to  stand  whether  we  like  it  or  not  is 
one  of  inequality.  The  nearest  we  come  to  equality, 
and  that  is  far  from  complete,  is  equality  of  priv- 
ilege. Men  are  born  with  unequal  talents,  one  and 
two  and  five.  They  inherit  far  differing  capacities. 
Some  have  great  acquisitive  powers  and  some  have 
none;  some  can  and  do  add  to  their  properties  and 
some  cannot  keep  what  they  inherit.  Our  quarrel 
is  not  with  the  economy  of  men,  but  with  the 
economy  of  God.  We  must  make  a  careful  analysis 
of  ourselves  and  see  in  just  what  our  advantages  lie 
and  in  what  our  investments  should  be  made, 
whether  in  ourselves  or  in  others  for  ourselves.  It 
may  be  that  they  are  in  a  certain  promising  mentality 
and  we  only  require  investment  in  intellectual  ca- 
pacity. It  may  be  that  the  man  is  the  contractor 
and  builder  of  fortunes  in  property.  His  talent  is 
five  of  acquisition.  He  must  not  bargain  himself  to 
any  organization  and  lose  his  identity.  There  are 
men  who  overestimate  themselves  and  fail  that  way. 
There  are  others,  and  more  of  them,  who  under- 
estimate themselves  and  their  splendid  personality  to 
become  absorbed  and  their  splendid  genius  to  be 
spoiled.  One  of  the  evils  of  the  present  form  of 

169 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

union  which  is  threatened  with  the  fatal  disease  of 
Bolshevism,  is  that  no  account  is  taken  of  a  man's 
unusual  capacity.  It  is  the  reverse  of  Burns,  UA 
man  is  a  man  for  a'  that."  A  man  is  a  machine  and 
only  that.  When  self-reliance  goes  out  there  is  not 
much  left  of  a  man.  An  arrangement  by  which  a 
man  loses  his  identity  and  is  merged  into  a  place  on 
terms  that  take  no  account  of  what  he  is  has  only  one 
end,  and  that  is  the  extinction  of  that  man  as  a  man. 
The  beauty  of  our  government  is  that  it  associates 
man  in  a  mighty  union  and  alliance  and  leaves  him  a 
definite  unit  with  a  fixed  value.  He  has  a  vote 
which  shifts  from  one  party  to  another  and  from  one 
to  another  issue  from  time  to  time.  He  does  not 
act  like  a  gear  in  a  machine  driven  by  some  central 
power.  He  is  the  central  power.  A  man  with  one 
issue  only,  and  that  the  profound  question  of  how 
much  wage  he  can  get,  is  passing  by  some  of  the 
greatest  questions  of  life  and  destiny.  The  great 
advantage  within  the  grasp  of  the  man  who  depends 
upon  nothing  but  his  hands  is  the  large  citizenship 
provided  for  him  in  a  country  that  is  the  sum  of  all 
the  best  in  all  countries  and  the  original  conception 
of  the  mighty  men  who  insisted  upon  their  inherent 
rights  to  offer  the  world  a  new  pattern  also.  It  will 
be  a  sad  day,  not  for  the  country  only  but  for  my 
neighbor  the  workingman  when  certain  destructive 
elements  that  are  beginning  to  see  that  they  have  no 
hope  of  success  under  the  name  which  they  have  re- 
cently imported  here,  get  an  insidious  and  treacher- 

170 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

ous  hold  upon  the  workingman's  union,  which  is 
showing  some  alarming  symptoms  of  sympathy  and 
degeneracy.  It  is  said  that  sailors  take  warning  and 
leave  a  ship  when  rats  leave  it.  It  is  a  better  time  to 
leave  a  ship  when  rats  come  into  it  and  take  charge 
of  it.  "Be  not  deceived,  God  is  not  mocked."  The 
principles  that  have  underlain  the  welfare  of  men 
and  accounted  for  their  marvelous  development  for 
hundreds  of  years  have  not  been  an  accident.  They 
must  not  give  place  to  the  accident  of  a  new  form  of 
socialism,  that  has  sadly  experimented  for  a  few 
months  on  a  soil  that  never  knew  of  republican  insti- 
tutions, but  is  overrun  with  tares  that  have  not  per- 
mitted the  wheat  of  liberty  to  grow  and  flourish. 
Our  nation's  workingmen  have  been  too  long  and 
too  richly  blessed  by  our  freedom  to  throw  these 
blessings  away  for  the  new  mess  of  pottage  brought 
over  by  the  Bolsheviki  and  disguising  itself  with  our 
old  rejected  socialism  and  the  labor  union  in  the 
dangerous  form  which  it  is  now  taking. 

If  I  were  to  specify  the  great  advantages  of  my 
neighbor  which  he  must  not  forget  in  the  glamour  of 
any  new  and  untried  issue,  I  would  call  his  attention 
to  what  America  votes  him  and  not  to  an  organiza- 
tion. It  puts  a  ballot  into  his  hand,  and  as  much  of 
a  ballot  as  is  in  the  hand  of  the  multimillionaire.  His 
richest  neighbor  has  no  more.  I  am  speaking  of 
law-abiding  men.  The  comparison  is  not  between 
an  honest  and  a  dishonest  man.  The  honest  poor 
man  has  as  much  of  a  vote  as  the  honest  rich  man. 

171 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

He  votes  and  not  an  organization  for  him.  He 
votes  and  not  a  job  for  him,  and  here  is  where  his 
manhood  takes  root.  And  he  votes  not  for  a 
schoolhouse  only,  but  for  the  man  who  will  stand  in 
his  place  in  Congress  and  who  will  account  to  him 
when  the  time  comes  about  for  a  representative  to 
be  chosen  again.  And  who  shall  say  that  the  voter 
shall  not  represent  himself? 

This  suggests  a  potent  reason  why  he  may.  What 
country  ever  offered  its  citizens  such  school  priv- 
ileges from  elementary  forms  up  through  all  grades 
and  all  technical  training  to  or  beyond  the  colleges 
and  universities?  The  everyday  laborer  is  proud  of 
his  boys  and  girls  in  the  public  school,  coming  home 
with  increasing  zest  for  books  and  knowledge.  The 
state  has  created  hundreds  of  these  schools  for  ele- 
mentary instruction  and  also  academies  and  normal 
schools.  In  nearly  every  State  there  is  one  college, 
and  in  some  of  the  States  private  benevolence  has 
planted  from  one  to  a  half  dozen  with  doors  open 
upon  most  generous  terms  to  all  young  people  with- 
out regard  to  race  or  sect.  Here  is  where  the 
fortunes  of  the  rich  seek  ways  of  helping  the  poor. 
Hundreds  of  colleges  in  our  country  have  been 
founded  by  men  and  women  who  believe  that  in  a 
republic  the  safety  of  the  nation  is  that  the  people 
who  are  to  do  the  thinking  and  voting  shall  be 
educated. 

In  a  monarchy  princes  and  princesses  are  edu- 
cated. In  America  the  people  are  the  princes  and 

172 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 


princesses.  The  moderate  tuition  fees  of  our 
American  colleges  and  universities  do  not  pay  one 
half,  if  they  do  one  third,  of  the  expenses  of  the 
students.  The  buildings  stand  as  a  free  gift  to  them. 
The  same  is  true  of  college  libraries,  museums, 
laboratories,  and  tens  of  thousands  of  dollars  of 
other  equipment — the  whole  indispensable  to  the 
work  of  higher  education  in  any  considerable  college 
or  a  university.  Besides  millions  of  money  are 
given  by  rich  and  modest  benefactors  in  endow- 
ments. The  poorest  paid  men  in  God's  vineyard 
have  put  millions  of  money  collectively  into  the 
colleges  to  make  it  possible  for  their  neighbor  the 
workingman  to  secure  a  liberal  education  for  his 
sons  and  daughters. 

Sometimes  it  is  said  that  the  motive  which 
prompts  these  wealthy  men  to  found  colleges  is  their 
desire  to  use  them  for  their  selfish,  economic  pur- 
poses. More  than  twenty-five  years  in  one  of  these 
institutions,  whose  benefactors  represented  the  steel, 
the  typewriter,  and  Standard  Oil  interests,  besides 
great  estates  of  the  retired  rich,  constitute  an  irre- 
futable authority  on  that  matter.  Never  in  any 
case,  in  any  instance  of  any  kind,  did  I  ever  receive 
such  a  suggestion  in  connection  with  any  gift  what- 
ever. The  utmost  freedom  of  instruction  was  never 
questioned.  Such  a  charge  is  as  groundless  as  nine- 
teen twentieths  of  the  slanders  against  the  rich  busi- 
ness men  of  our  country.  They  average  with  human 
nature  among  the  poor,  to  say  the  least.  They  were 

173 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

poor  once.  The  colleges  are  peculiarly  gifts  to  the 
poor,  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  poor  that  their 
sons  and  daughters  are  in  them  in  good  majority. 
The  hope  of  our  country  is  that  the  workingman 
and  woman  send  their  children  to  the  schools  and 
colleges. 

One  of  the  striking  examples  of  the  workingman's 
advantages  is  in  the  public  libraries,  many  of  them  so 
richly  endowed  by  Mr.  Carnegie,  himself  from  the 
home  of  poverty,  who,  when  a  vigorous  lad,  worked 
for  one  dollar  a  week.  These  libraries  founded  by 
the  community  or  some  benefactor  are  in  nearly  all 
the  villages  and  in  all  the  cities.  A  village  would 
almost  as  soon  be  without  water  or  light  or  sanitation 
or  schools  or  churches  as  without  the  free  library. 
Educated  men  and  women  are  the  committees  of 
these  libraries,  insuring  careful  selections  of  books, 
safe,  entertaining,  and  instructive.  Every  week  a 
book  may  be  in  the  humblest  home,  a  book  that  will 
tell  the  story  of  some  epoch  in  the  world's  history. 
One  may  have  a  plain  treatise  on  some  phase  of 
science.  He  may  read  the  best  of  literature.  He 
may  bring  home  the  story  of  bees  or  beavers,  of  wild 
birds  or  wild  flowers.  I  know  a  woman  who  took 
her  maid  and  roamed  about  a  few  hours  in  the 
Adirondacks  and  brought  home  over  forty  varieties 
of  blooming  plants.  That  autumn  I  met  a  natural- 
ist who  told  me  that  he  had  just  compiled  a  list  of 
more  than  eighty  wild  birds  which  summered  in  the 
Adirondacks.  The  boy  or  girl  may  take  home  from 

174 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 


the  library  rare  autobiographies  that  will  tell  the 
story  of  Lincoln  from  the  cabin  to  the  highest  posi- 
tion in  the  world.  He  may  bring  away  the  mechanic 
arts  and  develop  that  valuable  gift. 

I  found  a  college  janitor  who  was  reading  The 
Scientific  American,  Power,  Electrical  Engineering, 
etc.,  which  he  got  Saturdays  in  the  college  library. 
He  pursued  his  reading  nights  and  spare  and  free 
hours  until  he  became  a  master  plumber  and  did  the 
work  of  the  colleges.  He  kept  on  and  constructed 
the  large  power  house  of  the  institution,  which  has 
been  pronounced  by  well-known  engineers  a  model 
plant,  and  became  superintendent  of  buildings  and 
grounds,  directing  in  construction  of  steam,  electric, 
and  heating  apparatus,  selecting  and  setting  boilers 
and  engines.  He  is  recognized  as  authority  in  all 
those  things,  saving  the  university  tens  of  thousands 
of  dollars.  He  passed  on  from  a  pay  roll  of  fifty 
dollars  a  month  to  a  salary  of  three  thousand  dollars 
a  year,  and  would  command  more  than  twice  that 
salary  in  the  commercial  world,  but  for  his  loyalty 
to  the  institution  where  he  found  himself  by  odd 
hours  with  books  from  the  college  library.  Not 
every  boy  has  the  native  ability  to  make  so  much  of 
himself  out  of  a  few  books  and  spare  hours,  but  hun- 
dreds could  were  they  awakened  to  their  possi- 
bilities. 

Has  the  workingman  stopped  to  think  of  the  pos- 
sibilities of  his  public  library?  Suppose  he  were  to 
read  ten  pages  of  history  a  day,  or  of  science,  or  of 

175 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

biography.  That  is  three  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifty  pages  in  a  year.  That  is  twelve  volumes  of 
over  three  hundred  pages  in  a  year.  In  ten  years  he 
would  be  the  best-read  and  best-informed  man  in 
the  town  except  the  professional  men  who  make 
their  living  by  books.  It  would  constitute  him  a 
leader  among  his  fellows.  He  would  take  control 
of  the  thought  in  his  lodge  or  his  union.  Ten  of 
him  would  make  a  new  union.  If  those  books  had 
included  sound  political  science  and  industrial 
economics,  he  would  be  a  leader  in  realms  where 
sound  thought  is  at  a  premium.  But  the  estimate 
which  I  have  made  is  a  moderate  one.  He  could 
and  would  read  twice  as  many  pages  per  day. 
Would  it  not  interfere  with  his  day  labor?  It 
might.  He  would  be  demanded  perhaps  to  create 
labor  or  to  take  charge  of  great  enterprises.  If  it 
made  him  restless,  it  would  not  be  the  restlessness  of 
jealousy  and  envy  and  discontent  with  conditions. 
It  would  be  the  restlessness  of  a  great  and  worthy 
ambition.  It  would  be  "growing  pains."  The 
restlessness  of  intelligence  never  has  harmed  the 
world.  It  shames  the  foolish  and  ignorant  agitator. 
Use  the  free  library.  It  is  the  gift  of  a  fortune 
which  you  can  bring  into  your  home  every  week  and 
take  nothing  away  from  the  world.  Your  children 
will  invest  in  it  also,  and  the  more  they  have  the 
more  they  will  want,  and  the  more  they  have  the 
greater  they  will  grow,  and  it  is  your  home  th^at 
grows. 

m 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

Possibly  my  neighbor  the  workingman  has  not 
reckoned  the  churches  among  his  advantages.  Per- 
haps he  has  heard  harangues  against  them  and 
sneers  against  the  preacher,  the  priest,  and  the  rabbi. 
He  leaves  it  to  his  friends  to  use  them  to  say  a  decent 
word  when  he  dies  and  to  bury  him.  But  nearly 
always  the  workingman  has  a  church.  It  may  not 
be  the  best  one.  But  it  may  be  the  best  one  for 
him.  In  any  event,  if  he  uses  it  faithfully  and  gets 
out  of  it  the  best  it  has  for  him,  he  will  be  far  better 
off  than  without  any.  It  stands  for  the  best  morals. 
It  is  a  protest  against  that  fool  described  in  the  Bible 
as  saying,  "There  is  no  God."  Man's  relation  to 
man  is  based  upon  morals,  morals  with  a  Golden 
Rule  in  them,  morals  with  justice  and  truth  and 
charity  in  them,  morals  that  will  not  steal  nor  lie 
nor  covet  another  man's  property,  morals  that  are 
packed  away  in  Ten  Commandments  or  "ten  words" 
as  they  are  called,  a  collection  from  which  you  can- 
not take  one  word  without  endangering  the  world 
nor  to  which  the  world  has  ever  been  wise  enough 
to  add  another  one.  This  marvelously  perfect  plan 
of  morals,  wealth,  and  privilege  no  one  has  mo- 
nopoly of.  It  is  free  to  the  poorest  man  as  to  the 
richest.  The  fellowship  of  the  church,  its  sympathy, 
its  prayers,  its  charity,  its  visiting  nurses,  its  medi- 
cine, its  ministering  priests  and  preachers,  its  coun- 
sels in  all  kinds  of  difficulties  and  perplexities — was 
there  ever  a  community  without  them,  or  in  which 
men  and  women  would  consent  to  live  without  them, 

177 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

or,  if  without  them,  that  men  did  not  build  them, 
even  if  it  was  of  logs  or  adobe  earth  and  clay?  Men 
cannot  get  along  without  the  morals  taught  in  the 
churches.  Whatever  they  are  or  are  not,  good 
morals  they  insist  upon.  Lamps  may  be  orna- 
mental, but  they  must  have  a  receptacle  for  oil  or  be 
wired  for  electricity.  No  church  of  any  Christian 
or  Jewish  faith  would  hold  a  place  with  civilized 
people  without  putting  first  in  the  teaching  of  its 
doctrines  sound  morals.  They  are  an  asset  of  the 
community  and  an  asset  of  the  workingman.  They 
protect  his  home  and  give  him  a  square  deal  among 
his  fellow  men.  His  appeal  for  fair  treatment  is 
based  upon  the  morals  taught  by  his  church.  It  is 
only  when  his  passions  go  wild  and  he  forgets,  that 
he  neglects  his  church  and  becomes  dangerous  to 
himself  and  to  his  community. 

He  is  a  dangerous  sectary  who  would  sever  men 
from  their  churches,  from  a  system  even  with  which 
he  may  not  agree.  What  are  the  morals  taught? 
Are  men  better  without  them  or  with  them?  My 
neighbor  should  put  his  church,  whatever  it  is,  be- 
fore his  lodge  or  his  union,  or  any  industrial  or 
social  fellowship  whatever.  The  anchor  does  not 
propel  the  ship,  but  it's  a  mighty  handy  thing  to 
have  at  the  bow,  and  there  are  times  when  it  is  worth 
more  than  the  engine.  Precepts  are  great  with 
faith. 

Not  the  least  of  my  neighbor's  advantages  is  the 
time  in  which  he  lives.  If  he  is  only  wise  enough 

178 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

to  know  it,  many  of  the  questions  that  make  their 
practical  appeal  to  him  and  that  have  to  do  with 
his  daily  life  in  all  of  its  relations  have  been  settled. 
They  have  not  come  down  through  the  ages  passing 
by  all  of  the  tests  of  time  to  be  left  to  ranting  agi- 
tators to  determine  their  values  and  their  application 
to  human  affairs.  It  is  aside  from  the  work  to  say 
that  the  most  of  the  inventions  and  discoveries  have 
been  left  by  centuries  which  have  drifted  by  until 
they  reached  these  modern  times.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  inspiring  cause,  it  is,  nevertheless,  true 
that  the  world,  for  thousands  of  years,  along  its 
highest  ranges  of  thought,  was  giving  itself  to  moral 
problems.  Its  mind  was  upon  origin  and  destiny, 
upon  God  and  law  and  human  obligations.  Its  most 
marvelous  system  of  hygiene  which  the  world  has 
ever  seen  was  religious  and  ceremonial.  Tested  by 
the  present  experiences  of  men,  the  conclusions  of 
the  mighty  men  of  past  ages  stand  firmly  intrenched 
in  the  lives  of  the  most  intelligent  and  progressive 
peoples  of  the  earth.  It  is  not  necessary  to  quibble 
over  these  ancient  revelations  and  philosophies 
textually  or  doctrinally.  Prove  them  in  yourselves. 
What  are  they  to  you,  and  what  are  you  without 
them  with  the  so-called  new  thought  ?  Their  origin 
is  like  that  of  vitalism  and  gravitation.  Don't  wait 
until  you  invent  perpetual  motion  before  you  settle 
down  upon  the  old  law  that  this  universe  pulls  to  its 
centers  and  its  centers  are  drawn  to  greater  centers 
involved  in  the  mystery  of  that  common  center  about 

179 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

which  great  minds  do  not  prattle  much.  The  lesson 
of  an  infinitely  great  past  has  one  safe  lesson,  and 
that  is  that  men  count  for  little  until  they  fasten 
upon  greatness.  That  is  why  the  Bible  says  that 
man  is  a  fool  without  God.  The  conception  is  ele- 
vating, even  if  he  falls  infinitely  short  in  his  interpre- 
tations. I  do  not  ask  you  to  go  back  to  ancient 
writings,  Holy  Scriptures,  or  prescient  philosophy, 
though  that  were  an  invaluable  privilege ;  but  if  you 
cannot,  look  about  yourself.  The  test  is  the  fruits. 
Grapes  do  not  grow  from  thorns,  nor  figs  from 
thistles.  You  are  your  own  commentary.  This  is 
equally  true  of  divine  revelation  and  of  civil  and 
political  government.  The  greatest  Teacher  the 
world  has  had  said,  "Prove  me."  Of  this  mighty 
republic  we  may  confidently  say,  "Prove  it." 

It  is  true  that  new  times  bring  new  adaptations. 
But  the  fundamental  things  are  the  principles. 
These  have  been  secured  and  cannot  be  safely  torn 
away.  That  later  politician,  whatever  his  high 
position,  must  have  assuring  temerity  who  proceeds 
upon  the  theory  that  the  things  he  proposes  are  new 
discoveries.  Great  men  lived  and  threw  into  the 
culm  piles  and  slag  heaps  his  philosophies.  Our 
neighbors  should  compare  their  conditions,  which 
are  the  fruit  of  a  free  country,  with  those  of  a 
century  ago,  as  they  may  quickly,  from  the  plain 
short  histories  of  the  public  library,  to  which  refer- 
ence has  been  made.  Advances  secured  by  the  ap- 
plication of  creative  principles  that  have  been  the 

180 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

productive  roots  so  long  that  by  their  fruit  you  may 
know  them. 

It  is  incredible  that  intelligent  workingmen 
charged  with  their  country's  franchises,  many  of 
them  in  the  churches  and  benevolent  lodges  which 
sift  men  and  know  them,  will  hand  over  their  part 
in  the  world's  things  to  nothing  but  the  facile 
tongues  of  sudden  and  volatile  reformers  who  find  it 
easier  to  employ  their  tongues  than  their  brain  and 
muscle.  The  principles  of  the  ages  gone  have  not 
worn  out. 

There  was  a  time  when  certain  men  accounted  for 
the  motion  of  the  stars  with  windlasses  and  chains. 
And  the  old  fable  of  Atlas  bending  his  back  under 
the  earth  is  familiar.  You  are  asked  to  go  back  to 
that  mythology  if  you  forget  the  origin  of  your 
country  and  listen  to  croaking  of  the  frogs  in  the 
mud  holes  by  the  side  of  the  roads,  or  try  to  see 
through  the  fetid  vapors  distilled  over  the  quag- 
mires of  alien  socialism  compounded  with  the  black 
ignorance  of  our  little  egomaniacs  of  the  street 
gutters.  If  my  neighbor  the  workingman  has  any- 
thing to  thank  God  for,  it  is  that  he  has  a  past  to 
look  back  upon,  a  past  full  of  great  men,  great 
enough  for  the  ages  in  which  they  lived  and  with 
prophetic  vision  to  look  along  the  ages  and  antici- 
pate the  multitudes  who  would  be  anxiously  inquir- 
ing for  light.  They  were  not  men  who  lived  for 
themselves,  nor  did  they  die  to  themselves.  What 
a  striking  example  was  the  Father  of  the  American 

181 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

republic !  How  he  seems  to  live  in  these  years,  and 
to  speak  as  one  participating  in  our  affairs.  How 
prescient  his  warning  to  hurried,  preoccupied  men 
who  must  carry  as  intelligent  citizens  their  business 
and  affairs  of  state  lest  they  become  entangled 
in  the  politics  of  foreign  countries.  There  was 
nothing  narrow  or  unsympathetic  in  Washington. 
We  were  given  in  charge  by  Divine  Providence  of  a 
vast  land  and  country,  with  the  world's  greatest  ex- 
periment of  a  free  people.  Our  principles  would 
not  mix.  Enough  of  the  alien  element  would  come 
to  our  shores  which  would  have  to  be  amalgamated 
and  made  American.  We  must  let  other  nations 
work  their  problems.  We  cannot  work  both  by 
surrendering  ours. 

There  is  another  advantage  to  the  workingman  of 
this  time  which  all  of  them  do  not  yet  appreciate. 
It  is  not  confined  to  my  neighbor  the  workingman. 
It  is  a  universal  blessing,  but  more  marked  in  the 
case  of  the  laborer  whose  income  is  from  day  to 
day  and  whose  expenditures  leave  a  narrow  margin. 
It  is  so  hackneyed,  and  its  story  so  trite  and  worn 
that  the  mention  of  it  sends  some  minds  into  their 
shells  like  mud  turtles.  It  has  been  a  moth  in  the 
workingman's  wage.  It  has  cost  his  wife  a  dress 
and  his  children  shoes  and  frocks  and  coats;  and, 
worst  of  all,  it  has  cost  the  husband  and  father  his 
self-respect  and  turned  his  noble  instincts  into  bestial 
passions,  dangerous  to  himself  and  his  home.  Some 
of  his  friends  in  their  opposition  to  this  foe  have  not 

182 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

always  been  wise.  Those  who  proposed  that  by  law 
they  would  search  his  home  did  not  have  their  zeal 
according  to  knowledge.  The  law  had  to  deal  with 
the  saloon.  It  was  an  institution.  It  made 
merchandise  of  the  poor  man's  home.  It  waylaid 
him  on  his  way  home  with  his  week's  earnings  and 
took  them  away  from  his  wife  and  children  after 
creating  an  appetitie  that  robbed  him  of  his  manly 
power  of  resistance.  That  enemy  of  the  town  and 
all  in  it  had  to  be  closed.  Generations  made  other 
experiments  to  save  the  men  who  frequented  such 
places,  but  no  law  must  be  permitted  to  touch  any 
man's  home  in  search  of  his  personal  habits. 
Paternalism  that  goes  that  far  is  itself  an  enemy  of 
manhood.  It  were  better  that  a  man  be  tempted  to 
get  drunk  at  times,  and  that  he  have  the  means  of 
doing  it,  than  that  he  be  made  a  manikin  to  be  pulled 
by  strings  in  the  hands  of  personal  meddlers.  Some- 
thing must  be  left  to  the  man.  It  is  a  great  boon 
that  the  saloon  has  gone.  It  is  a  legacy  to  the 
workingman  peculiarly  that  has  been  secured  to  him 
by  the  everlasting  removal  of  the  saloon.  It  is  an 
inheritance  to  his  children,  and  no  one  is  happier 
than  his  wife  if  she  is  worthy  of  being  the  mother  of 
her  children.  It  has  been  a  hard  fight,  and  many 
thousands  of  the  workingmen  have  helped  to  win  it. 
It  could  not  have  been  won  without  them.  It  must 
not  be  assumed  that  the  workingmen  as  a  class  sup- 
ported the  saloon  and  contended  for  it.  Many  of 
them  did,  but  more  of  them  did  not,  and  they  were 

183 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  great  reenforcement  of  the  forces  which  won  for 
temperance  and  sobriety.  It  was  a  fight  against 
millions  of  invested  money.  It  was  a  fight  against 
politics.  It  was  a  fight  against  rents  and  employees. 
It  was  a  fight  against  mistaken  ecclesiastics  and 
champions  of  liberty  of  individual  choice,  even 
though  the  law  in  many  other  instances  is  constantly 
denying  such  a  choice.  It  was  a  fight  against  appe- 
tite, not  restrained  but  unrestrained,  and  often 
demoniacal;  an  appetite  that  heard  no  argument 
from  scalding  tears  of  wife  nor  shame  of  children. 
One  cannot  pass  these  peculiar  advantages  that 
have  come  to  the  workingmen  and  their  families 
without  noticing  what  seems  to  be  a  strange  Provi- 
dence in  point  of  time  and  substitution  of  a  want 
which  made  the  removal  of  the  saloon  a  more  diffi- 
cult task.  Men  demand  social  intercourse,  a  place 
where  they  can  meet  with  men  of  their  way  of  think- 
ing and  especially  where  entertainment  is  to  be 
found.  What  was  to  be  done  with  them  when  the 
saloon  was  closed?  Many  plans  had  been  proposed, 
none  of  them  altogether  practical.  They  would 
not  be  religious.  They  could  not  be  irreligious. 
The  moving  picture  was  invented.  It  came 
along  in  time  to  fit  the  demand  for  harmless 
entertainment,  and  more,  an  instructive  entertain- 
ment. The  man  had  a  place  to  spend  his  evening 
with  small  cost  if  he  took  his  wife  and  children.  It 
brought  to  him  the  lands  heretofore  in  the  stories  of 
travelers.  It  took  him  to  the  Far  East.  It  showed 

184 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  ADVANTAGES 

him  the  unknown  races  of  men  and  their  manner  of 
life,  objects  of  natural  history  in  their  habits,  the 
flora  of  the  tropics,  the  boundless  ice  wastes  of  the 
frigid  zones,  the  industries  of  coal  and  iron  mines, 
the  products  of  the  prairies,  manufactories,  and  the 
exploits  of  men  in  all  fields  of  heroic  ventures  from 
fishing  and  hunting  of  great  game  to  war.  The 
moving  picture  displaced  the  saloon  and  vulgar, 
cheap  theaters  with  a  new  world  of  knowledge  in  a 
setting  of  wholesome  amusement.  That  sometimes 
it  fell  into  the  hands  of  vultures  is  not  strange,  but 
the  public  taste  would  not  tolerate  it  and  suffer  it  to 
spoil  the  instruction  and  recreation  of  the  homes  of 
the  people. 

These  are  some  of  the  advantages  which  can  be 
enumerated  as  peculiarly  waiting  for  the  elevation 
and  improvement  of  a  great  class  of  our  most 
worthy  citizens  who  are  represented  by  demagogues 
and  socialist  pirates  as  oppressed,  down-trodden  and 
abused  by  the  capitalists  and  predatory  rich.  No 
class  in  our  great  prosperous  land  is  more  fortu- 
nately situated  than  these  same  people  when  they  use 
the  gifts  of  Providence  and  the  freedom  of  their 
country  intelligently,  soberly,  and  industrially.  If 
they  despise  those  things  because  they  have  not  the 
rich  man's  riches;  if  they  listen  to  the  insane  rant- 
ings  that  they  should  not  labor  because  some  men 
have  ten  talents  when  other  men  have  one  only;  if 
they  pass  by  the  great  things  of  their  country  which 
are  blessing  others  so  freely,  and  spend  their  time  in 

185 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

foolishly  attempting  to  mend  the  world,  their  lives 
are  to  be  miserable  and  the  world  will  not  be  mended 
by  them,  but  it  would  be  so  much  better  off  without 
them,  as  they  have  influence  to  do  it  harm.  No  man 
on  our  earth  has  such  an  opportunity  just  of  himself 
as  the  laborer,  upon  whom  so  light  a  tax  of  steward- 
ship is  put  by  the  demands  of  his  calling,  so  little 
anxiety,  so  little  of  plans  and  the  accident  of 
markets.  He  can  increase  himself  and  enlarge  his 
sphere  of  powers  and  happiness  on  the  capital  fur- 
nished by  others. 


186 


CHAPTER  IX 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

NEXT  to  a  man's  religion  is  his  country,  and  his 
country  is  an  essential  part  of  his  religion.  A  re- 
ligion is  not  worth  much  that  is  an  emotional  mysti- 
cism with  no  substantial  attachments  and  duties  to 
this  earth.  "Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's."  That  is  one  way  to  render  unto  God  the 
things  that  are  God's.  If  one  has  an  underde- 
veloped country,  poor  in  its  resources,  one  has  a  duty 
to  it  while  he  is  a  part  of  it.  As  far  as  possible  he 
is  to  improve  it  by  all  of  the  intelligent  energy  he  can 
put  into  it.  It  is  his  country.  It  may  be  his  duty 
to  stay  by  it  and  to  muster  to  it  all  the  persons  and 
influences  that  may  serve  it  and  to  defend  it  against 
its  foes  with  his  life.  It  is  because  of  this  inmate 
loyalty  that  there  is  so  much  sympathy  in  our  country 
with  Ireland.  Its  beautiful  land,  the  devout  attach- 
ment of  its  people,  its  great  men  who  stand  upon 
such  proud  summits  of  history  in  the  world's  great 
achievements,  its  persistent  appeals  for  liberty  and 
autonomy  deeply  move  us  who  so  recently  were 
struggling  against  the  same  country  for  freedom. 
But  we  are  not  unmindful  nor  indifferent  to  the 
vexed  problem  of  Great  Britain  if  a  land  so  near 
were  to  become  independent  and  form  an  alliance 

187 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

with  another  nation  that  might  be  unfriendly  to  the 
mother  country.  And  we  have  to  remember  that 
certain  irreconcilable  elements  in  business  and  indus- 
tries, as  well  as  religion,  divide  the  beautiful  green 
island  within  itself.  Much  awaits  the  movements 
of  political  science  and  social  philosophy  before  a 
consummation  devoutly  desired  by  not  a  few  Eng- 
lishmen and  Americans  shall  be  brought  to  pass. 
Some  of  us  have  thought  that  a  more  desirable  home 
government  for  the  British  Isles  would  be  the  plan 
of  the  United  States  or  of  Canada,  in  which  there 
are  states  or  provinces  of  independent  government 
under  a  central  Congress  or  Parliament  and  supreme 
executive  head  and  court.  Ireland  divided  into  two 
states  would  remove  the  internal  industrial  and  re- 
ligious conflict:  Wales  a  state,  Scotland  a  state, 
North  England,  Middle  England,  Southern  Eng- 
land and  Western  England  states,  all  with  their 
governors,  local  Legislatures,  courts  and  repre- 
sentatives in  the  two  houses  of  Parliament,  with,  for 
the  time  being,  the  constitutional  king  for  its 
supreme  head.  Until  some  such  plan  is  found  the 
world  will  continue  to  find  itself  in  sympathy  with 
Ireland,  unless  it  is  to  be  in  conflict  with  its  own 
loyalty  to  freedom.  The  world  is  to  progress  upon 
the  plans  of  a  free  republic  like  the  United  States,  or 
a  democratic  monarchy  largely  in  name  only,  and  it 
will  not  take  kindly  to  the  subjection  of  any  consider- 
able people  craving  for  autonomy. 

I  have  strayed  a  little  aside,  but  it  may  illustrate 
188 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

the  problem  of  love  of  country  which  is  not  always  a 
simple  one.  It  sometimes  involves  contention  and 
rebellion  from  what  are  considered  oppression  and 
tyranny,  but  always  by  representative  parties  in  con- 
troversy, and  never  by  murderous  Bolshevism  nor 
bomb-throwing  assassination  of  innocent  and  un- 
offending women  and  children,  nor  the  destruction 
of  shops  and  factories  in  which  are  peaceably  labor- 
ing men  and  girls,  whose  only  offense  is  that  they  are 
employed  by  some  capitalists  who  have  excited  the 
envy  of  the  most  cowardly  and  fiendish  murderers 
who  ever  disgraced  even  the  name  of  murder. 

Duty  to  country  is  always  constructive  if  it  is  loyal 
and  wise.  It  begins  by  offering  something  better. 
It  displaces  the  less  good  with  a  greater  good  and  it 
gives  the  whole  people  the  privilege  of  saying  which 
they  will  have.  The  first  duty  of  a  citizen  is  loyalty. 
The  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  defend  what  we  have, 
and  never  to  part  with  it  until  we  are  shown  that 
which  is  better.  The  better  representation  of  our 
liberties  is  not  an  assassin  with  a  suit  case  and  a  time 
bomb.  The  duty  to  such  indescribably  loathsome 
creatures  is  to  imprison  or  deport  them.  If  ever 
the  severest  measures  are  justified,  it  is  with  such 
fiends.  Love  of  country  will  insist  that  no  perilous 
sentimentalism  shall  delay  the  processes  of  the 
courts  in  such  cases.  Love  of  country  justifies 
destruction  of  the  assassins  of  our  citizens  at  their 
employment  or  of  their  families  sleeping  innocently 
in  their  homes  when  no  discrimination  is  made  be- 

189 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

tween  the  assaulted  judge  or  capitalist  and  the  baby 
upon  its  mother's  breast.  It  is  a  serious  question 
as  to  whether  we  have  much  to  boast  of  while 
common  moral  sentiment  leaves  it  possible  for 
such  barbarous  practices  to  pass  with  such  easy  pos- 
sibility of  escape  from  detection,  and  if  detected, 
from  correction.  The  appeal  of  vigilance  is  to 
every  man  of  every  station  in  the  community.  It 
should  begin  with  so  great  love  and  loyalty  for  our 
country  that  the  street  corner  orator  who  begins  any 
assault  upon  our  institutions  whatever  shall  end  his 
oration  in  the  ditch,  or  the  nearest  jail,  if  there  is 
an  officer  to  arrest  him;  if  not,  then  the  ditch. 

Americans  must  be  Americans,  and  they  should 
not  allow  anyone  in  this  country  to  be  anything  but 
Americans.  No  man  has  a  right  to  live  in  this 
country  anything  but  an  American.  Ambassadorial 
residents  are  under  sacred  obligation  to  be  loyal  to 
our  laws  and  usages.  The  most  despicable  creatures 
of  our  experience  have  been  the  representatives  of 
the  German  Embassy,  of  whom  Bernstorff  shone  as 
the  principal  star  in  that  low  and  murky  firmament. 
Often  we  hear  men  say  that  they  have  lived  here 
twenty  or  more  years  but  have  never  been  natural- 
ized. There  is  some  mistake  somewhere,  either 
with  our  laws  or  with  these  men.  They  should  have 
been  compelled  to  naturalize  or  account  for  them- 
selves in  positive  terms  every  year.  We  have  too 
much  at  stake  from  the  red  socialist  to  permit  any 
such  precedents.  Honest  men,  changing  their  resi- 

190 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

dence  from  their  old  lands  to  the  new,  should  cast 
their  lot  into  permanent  citizenship  and  help  bear  its 
burdens.  Public  sentiment,  the  sentiment  of  associ- 
ates in  business  and  labor,  should  emphasize  the  ob- 
ligation. No  man  has  a  right  to  take  out  of  this 
country  the  benefits  of  citizenship  and  render  no 
return  for  them. 

Should  our  working  people  bring  to  bear  the  pres- 
sure of  their  sentiment  upon  all  who  come  here  who 
are  fit  or  promise  fitness,  that  they  must  become 
citizens,  it  would  be  a  most  efficient  correction  of 
some  of  our  dangers.  Those  who  are  not  fit  should 
not  be  permitted  to  land  here;  and  if  by  chance  they 
do  land,  they  should  be  hunted  out  and  sent  back. 
We  stop  the  physically  unfit.  It  is  far  more  im- 
portant to  stop  the  mentally  unfit,  or  the  unsympa- 
thetic and  inimical.  There  are  processes  by  which 
this  can  easily  be  determined.  A  method  is  being 
introduced  into  the  examination  of  candidates  for 
admission  to  college  by  which  their  place  may  be 
determined  for  the  most  successful  pursuit  of 
studies.  Mental  aptitude  may  be  graded.  It  is  far 
more  important  to  apply  some  such  practice  to  men 
and  women  coming  to  this  country  to  prey  upon  us 
and  to  grow  up  with  the  odor  of  Mephitis  Ameri- 
cana, and  the  jaws  of  a  combined  wolf  and  a  laugh- 
ing hyena.  Our  location,  our  marvelous  extent  of 
territory  and  resources,  invite  the  world  to  our 
shores.  We  have  been  able  to  receive  them  and 
share  with  all  people  our  opportunities.  For  gencr- 

191 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ations  we  were  safe  in  this  wide  generosity.  We 
benefited  by  it.  Men  and  women  who  became  its 
noblest  citizens  came  to  our  shores.  They  speedily 
became  citizens  themselves.  They  reached  the 
highest  positions  in  our  business  life.  Mr.  Carnegie 
was  one  of  them.  There  could  be  no  better  Ameri- 
cans. The  disturbances  of  our  land  are  not  by 
native  nor  by  adopted  men  and  women  schooled  in 
Americanism,  as  a  rule,  but  by  people  who  come  to 
us  raw.  They  have  established  no  claim  to  an 
opinion  among  us  with  regard  to  our  institutions. 
They  know  nothing.  They  have  nothing  to  offer. 
They  want  to  destroy  what  they  find.  We  are 
under  no  obligation  to  such  persons,  and  those  who 
join  them  are  like  them.  Those  who  use  them  have 
some  demagogic  purpose  to  serve  and  should  equally 
find  no  tolerance  from  us. 

If  we  are  Americans,  we  shall  be  Americans  in 
something  besides  fair  weather.  It  does  not  cost 
much  to  be  Americans  when  the  dollar  is  worth  a 
hundred  cents  and  the  cost  of  living  is  normal  and 
we  all  have  well-paid  employment.  It  ought  not  to 
be  a  difficult  task  to  be  Americans  when  the  tide  is 
running  out  and  it  is  hard  work  to  stem  it.  We  are 
not  very  worthy  sons  of  our  sires  if  a  little  high  cost 
of  living  and  small  pay  throws  us  off  our  balance  and 
sends  us  out  rioting  against  the  government  and 
threatening  all  kinds  of  calamity  to  business  and 
trade.  It  is  a  test;  are  we  equal  to  it?  It  is  not  the 
blood  of  our  fathers  that  plays  us  so  falsely.  Our 

192 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

fathers  gave  their  lives  and  suffered  worse  than 
death  for  their  country.  uThey  counted  not  their 
lives  dear  unto  themselves."  They  were  tempted 
by  severest  trials  to  forsake  their  country.  But 
to-day  in  Congress  men  stand  up  and  threaten  the 
country  with  most  dire  consequences  if  our  working- 
men  have  to  pay  extra  for  a  pair  of  shoes  or  of  over- 
alls. We  are  warned  that  we  are  upon  the  edge  of 
a  revolution.  The  country  saved  at  Valley  Forge  is 
going  to  be  thrown  away,  not  because  we  are  cold 
and  ragged  and  without  money,  as  they  were  at 
Valley  Forge,  but  only  because  we  have  to  pay  more 
and  get  less,  and  because  we  have  a  temporary  in- 
convenience with  the  cost  of  our  living  expenses. 
Frankly  and  emphatically,  I  do  not  believe  it.  They 
are  not  Americans.  They  are  the  riffraff  that  the 
demagogues  are  jockeying  with.  They  never  had 
living  that  they  earned,  and  they  know  nothing  of 
whether  living  costs  much  or  little.  Genuine  Ameri- 
cans quietly  adjust  themselves  to  conditions.  They 
are  too  wise  and  too  loyal  to  strike  for  impossible 
wage,  when  there  is  nothing  with  which  to  pay  it. 
They  wait  patiently  until  they  can  change  the  times. 
They  do  with  less.  They  economize,  and  that  is 
what  they  will  do  now  if  they  are  let  alone.  It  is  a 
good  lesson.  It  is  wholesome  to  the  home.  I  used 
to  hear  them  singing  when  I  was  a  boy,  "Hard  times 
will  come  again  no  more."  But  they  have  come, 
and  they  will  keep  on  coming,  and  we  should  keep  on 
singing,  while  supply  and  demand  changes  the  value 

193 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

of  a  dollar.  The  cure-alls,  the  fools  who  expect  to 
legislate  the  millennium,  will  keep  on,  but  "they  can- 
not fool  all  of  the  people  all  of  the  time." 

We  have  too  much  faith  in  people  of  America  to 
believe  that  there  is  going  to  be  a  revolution  because 
we  cannot  get  a  living  as  cheaply  as  in  former  times, 
and  at  the  same  time  lay  up  as  much  money.  The 
preachers  are  not  going  to  stop  preaching  because 
a  dollar  of  their  too  scant  salary  is  worth  only  sixty 
cents  now  and  everything  they  buy  costs  twice  as 
much.  They  do  not  purpose  to  rebel  and  lead  a 
revolution  because  out  of  their  income  of  a  thousand 
dollars  the  general  government  takes  away  an  in- 
come tax  and  the  State  comes  along  and  taxes  it  also. 
The  teachers  will  keep  on  teaching.  The  doctors 
will  not  forsake  the  poor.  There  will  be  hundreds 
of  thousands  who  will  keep  plodding  on  until  "hard 
times  come  again  no  more."  It  is  not  the  true  and 
loyal  Americans  who  will  break  up  traffic  and  burst 
in  the  doors  of  the  stores  and  steal  their  goods. 
Americans  are  made  of  a  different  metal.  You  can 
arouse  them  by  denying  them  their  freedom  until 
they  will  unload  your  tea  into  the  harbors  and  go 
without  tea,  but  you  cannot  starve  them  or  freeze 
them  into  rebellion  against  the  government  which  is 
doing  the  best  it  can  under  new  and  trying  condi- 
tions. We  civilians  are  suffering  our  part  of  the 
war  now.  The  American  workingman  is  not  going 
to  be  deceived  by  the  demagogue  into  believing  that 
the  rich  are  hoarding  their  money  and  making  a 

194 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

stringent  money  market.  They  have  no  money. 
They  are  borrowers.  Their  money  is  carrying  the 
railroads  which  the  un-American  are  threatening  to 
tie  up  until  a  wheel  cannot  turn.  They  are  carrying 
the  subways  and  elevated  rapid  transits.  They  are 
making  the  capital  for  all  of  the  great  business  out 
of  which  they  are  getting  far  less  per  cent  of  profit 
than  they  received  in  the  normal  times  when  prices 
were  easily  within  reach  of  the  everyday  people. 
The  intelligent  American  cannot  be  deceived  by  the 
foolishness  that  the  returns  of  business  and  the  tariff 
of  railroads  belong  to  him ;  that  whatever  they  earn 
is  his  profit;  and  if  they  earn  nothing,  but  accumulate 
a  debt,  that  debt  does  not  touch  his  wage,  which  con- 
tinues the  same,  but  the  debt — the  deficit — must  be 
paid  by  the  government  in  taxes  of  those  who  have 
not  and  never  did  have  anything  to  say  about  rail- 
roads, or  it  may  be  lost  by  the  capitalists  who  own 
the  stock.  Americans  are  not  thieves,  nor  social- 
istic fools.  They  know  what  belongs  to  them,  and 
they  know  what  does  not  belong  to  them.  They 
learned  these  lessons  long  generations  before  the 
outbreak  of  Russian  Bolshevism  started  out  with  its 
doctrine  of  piracy  upon  property  and  the  reversal  of 
the  marriage  bonds.  We  have  nothing  to  unlearn 
of  these  things  until  the  Almighty  reverses  the  moral 
law.  That  will  happen  when  water  runs  up  hill  and 
heat  makes  ice  on  the  ponds  in  summer,  and  gravita- 
tion loses  its  grip  on  the  universe.  The  un-Ameri- 
can performances  being  played  in  this  country  to-day 

195 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

for  the  edification  of  the  world  are  by  players  who 
have  come  here  with  mighty  discordant  notes.  They 
are  alien  tunes.  We  listen  to  them  with  curiosity  as 
something  entertaining  because  novel.  But  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  believe  such  doctrines  have  taken 
root  here  except  in  that  stony  ground  where  the  soil 
is  too  shallow  to  bear  them  or  among  the  riotous 
thorns  where  they  flourish  for  a  little  time,  just  long 
enough  to  cause  passing  alarm  among  some  of  our 
nervous  and  too  easily  excited  people.  Bearing 
upon  the  thought  that  much  of  the  agitation  among 
us  is  exotic  is  a  very  recent  statement  that  an  English 
agitator  lately  subordinate  in  the  British  Cabinet  is 
coming  over  to  this  country  to  establish  a  labor 
political  party.  It  is  confidently  believed  that  he 
will  return  a  wiser  if  not  a  better  man.  He  will  find 
that  except  by  those  who  are  deluding  him  into  his 
foolish  errand,  the  workingmen  of  this  country  have 
taken  wiser  counsel  and  are  keeping  their  labor  ques- 
tions out  of  politics.  It  is  the  surest  death  to  the 
great  labor  interests  to  launch  them  into  the  political 
arena.  It  would  be  American  to  split  them  between 
two  great  political  parties  and  in  a  short  time  there 
would  be  nothing  of  the  great  and  valuable  questions 
of  labor  but  a  cheap  form  of  party  politics  alternat- 
ing between  success  of  a  small  kind  and  defeat  of  a 
great  kind,  for  a  short  time  when  only  some  idly 
floating  baubles  in  the  quieting  surface  would  tell 
where  it  all  went  down.  There  would  not  be  enough 
of  it  to  salvage!  Our  friend  who  plans  to  come 

196 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

from  England  with  enlightenment  ought  by  this  time 
to  have  learned  something  in  his  own  country.  In  all 
the  mighty  canvass  only  recently  passed  in  that  great 
land,  scarcely  enough  socialists  are  found  in  Parlia- 
ment to  count.  The  secret  is  in  the  fact  that  consti- 
tutionally Great  Britan  is  a  land  of  freedom  like 
America,  arid  the  people  move  upon  the  same  prin- 
ciples. Freedom  does  not  make  an  issue  around 
some  one  interest  among  so  many  vast  economic  con- 
cerns. The  principles  must  touch  all  humanity. 
And  while  labor  does  concern  us  all,  it  does  so  in 
differing  ways.  Labor  has  been  so  badly  misman- 
aged and  made  so  many  opponents  by  its  methods 
that  there  could  be  no  general  concentration  in  its 
behalf  among  American  voters.  Politics  will  be  a 
dead  failure  among  the  workingmen.  There  are 
too  many  who  are  not  affiliated  with  the  organiza- 
ions,  and  too  many  in  the  organizations  are  already 
irrevocably  classified  politically.  The  organizations 
are  astonishingly  in  the  minority  among  the  vast 
number  of  workingmen  in  this  country.  Such  a  man 
best  remain  at  home.  America  is  not  a  congenial 
soil  for  such  an  enterprise.  It  is  true  that  our 
country  is  prolific  in  experiments,  and  in  that  is 

here  so  many  people  not  acquainted  with  us  make 
serious  mistakes  about  us.  Before  one  of  these  en- 
terprises is  fairly  launched,  we  have  another  on  the 
way,  and  are  done  with  the  first  before  it  makes  a 
voyage.  That  is  why  so  many  fortunes  are  made 

nd  lost  here.  It  does  not  do  to  take  us  too  seri- 

197 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ously,  and  it  is  not  wise  to  diagnose  our  symptoms 
too  impulsively.  We  move  in  great  waves  of  en- 
thusiasm of  feeling  and  of  protest.  One  day  the 
country  is  going  to  the  dogs,  and  it  is  exalted  to  the 
heavens  the  next  day.  It  is  a  great  land  in  which  to 
be  "as  wise  as  serpents  and  as  harmless  as  doves." 

The  time  comes  and  you  get  the  impression  that 
the  country  is  being  split  into  pieces.  One  party  is 
announced  as  victorious  at  the  polls.  In  twenty- 
four  hours  it  is  all  reversed.  How  can  we  escape  a 
revolution  ?  Twenty-four  hours  more  and  the  shop 
machinery  is  humming,  the  farmer  is  behind  his 
plow,  the  commercial  traveler  is  out  on  the  road 
taking  orders.  He  is  selling  goods  as  though  no 
controversy  had  warned  the  business  world  of 
danger  to  trade  a  few  hours  before.  We  are  hav- 
ing a  wild  tumult  in  the  cities  to-day.  Business  is 
being  interrupted  and  there  will  be  some  loss  of  life. 
An  insane  frenzy  has  seized  a  class  of  working 
people.  All  know  that  it  cannot  be  prolonged,  for 
those  who  are  guilty  of  it  in  the  immediate  acts  are 
dependent  themselves  upon  that  which  they  are 
denying  to  others,  and  soon  will  feel  the  sobering 
pinch  of  their  own  mischievous  blunders,  and  it  will 
sober  them.  There  will  be  no  revolution.  There 
will  be  only  a  spasm.  These  spasms  are  unpleasant 
symptoms,  but  they  are  curable,  and  after  a  time  the 
devils  of  it  go  entirely  out  into  the  swine  which  go 
tumbling  down  into  the  sea  of  oblivion.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  commiserate  the  devils  which  have  dis- 

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MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

turbed  this  country  for  a  time  and  then  have  only 
succeeded  in  the  herding  of  worthless  swine,  a  sort 
of  razor-backs.  They  have  not  touched  the  great, 
solid,  far-thinking  people  of  labor  or  commerce  or 
the  professors  in  the  schools.  It  is  a  matter  of  great 
importance  to  our  country  that  our  people  should  all 
learn  as  a  lesson  of  great  practical  importance  how 
to  interpret  mere  passing  spasms,  and  to  discriminate 
between  the  spasms  of  the  shallow  agitators  which 
are  evanescent  and  the  symptoms  of  serious  condi- 
tions in  the  country  to  which  sober  and  earnest 
thought  must  be  addressed;  the  difference  between  a 
careless  misuse  of  our  constitutional  privileges  and 
such  a  passing  economic  condition  as  that  now  upon 
us,  which  will  not  be  regulated  by  legislature  but  will 
run  its  course  until  it  strikes  the  unfailing  currents 
of  demand  and  supply  and  the  readjustments  of 
labor,  disturbed  and  disordered  by  the  inroads  of  the 
war  upon  almost  all  of  our  callings. 

It  is  not  strange  that  in  a  conglomerate  country  it 
should  take  time  and  patience  to  learn  all  of  the  les- 
sons of  its  freedom  and  privileges,  and  at  the  same 
time  of  its  restraints  and  safeguards.  How  far  can 
we  go  without  harm?  and  how  far  can  we  restrain 
the  harmful  without  reproducing  the  conditions  of 
some  of  the  effete  countries  from  which  many  of  our 
new  citizens  have  come?  We  have  to  learn  the 
lesson  that  often  our  protests  against  others  result 
in  more  embarrassment  and  punishment  to  our- 
selves. We  cannot  stop  others  from  riding  on  the 

199 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

elevated,  the  subway,  and  the  trolleys  and  ride  our- 
selves. If  we  tie  up  the  steam  roads  so  that  ua 
wheel  will  never  turn  again,"  we  who  tie  them  up 
must  walk  the  ties  or  take  to  the  prairie  schooner 
ourselves.  If  we  destroy  the  property,  who  will 
pay  our  wages?  We  do  nothing  to  others  that  we 
do  not  do  to  ourselves.  We  depreciate  our  cottages 
and  hurry  the  foreclosure  of  their  mortgages.  We 
increase  the  cost  of  our  living  expenses.  It  is  a 
singular  practical  law  in  our  domestic  economy  that 
if  we  increase  our  wages  beyond  what  the  business 
or  corporation  we  serve  with  our  labor  will  bear  and 
pay  a  return,  we  force  up  the  price  of  our  food  and 
our  clothes.  We  visit  the  penalty  upon  ourselves, 
and  we  carry  up  not  only  our  expenses  but  those  of 
thousands  who  are  in  other  callings  about  us  and 
disturb  the  economy  of  the  whole  country.  There 
is  no  end  to  the  mischievous  consequences  of  our 
selfish  course.  The  railroad  man  who  complained 
of  the  endless  chain  that  carried  increased  wage  and 
also  increased  cost  of  living  stood  dazed  with  his 
perplexing  problem  and  hurried  off  to  the  govern- 
ment to  solve  it  for  him.  He  became  so  angry  over 
it  that  he  wanted  to  hurry  up  a  firing  squad  and  stop 
the  wheels  turning,  and  the  government  gets  excited 
and  starts  in  to  put  more  buckets  on  the  endless 
chain.  It  proposes  to  legislate  costs  up  and  down, 
and  in  the  process  it  sees  prices  mount  into  the  sky. 
It  might  as  well  legislate  against  the  tides  of  the  sea 
or  the  phases  of  the  moon.  It  may  catch  a  few 

200 


ap 

: 

er 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

profiteers  and  shut  them  up,  and  it  should,  and  com- 
pel them  to  disgorge  their  hoarded  produce  and 
goods,  but  that  does  not  go  to  the  cause.  It  is  only 
an  incident  connected  with  the  cause.  The  trouble 
lies  deeper.  The  profiteer  does  not  make  it.  He 
takes  advantage  of  it  and  aggravates  it  within  cer- 
tain limits  and  narrow  areas.  It  is  a  condition  that 
springs  out  of  unusual  causes.  It  is  a  shortage  of 
reduction  by  scarcity  of  labor  and  an  overplus  of 
oney  uninvested  and  unemployed  in  productive 
nterprises. 

The  labor  union,  an  artificial  and  unnaturally  and 
illogically  attached  institution  in  our  country,  work- 
ing not  for  the  common  good  but  to  create  conditions 
altogether  possible  and  profitable  to  its  own  mem- 
rs  without  regard  to  how  its  acts  may  bear  upon 
usiness  of  construction  and  manufacture,  has  much 
to  do  with  the  disturbances  of  prices  and  the  costs  of 
he  common  necessities  of  the  life  of  a  community, 
t  places  an  arbitrary  demand  upon  business  at  a 
time  when  business  cannot  carry  it.     The  union  is 
ot  capable  of  discriminating.     If  it  always  discrim- 
nated  justly  and    wisely,   all    fair-minded    people 
ould  say  that  business  should  share  with  the  la- 
borers and  mechanics  represented  by  the  union,  that 
e  best  interests  of  the  town  and  of  business  itself 
demanded  the  best  wage  that  can  be  paid  should 
be    paid.      But    often    the    union    strikes    business 
when  it  is  down.    It  may  be   a  particular  business 
whose    returns    have    been    misrepresented     and 

201 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

it  is  impossible  to  carry  a  higher  scale  of  wage 
with  the  business  as  it  is.  The  case  is  finally  com- 
promised and  something  not  published  is  the  result. 
The  commodity  is  pushed  up,  and  when  this  becomes 
general,  from  shoes  to  suits  of  clothes,  from  type- 
writers to  automobiles,  from  wheat  to  sugar,  you 
have  the  high  cost  of  living.  The  labor  goes  be- 
yond the  production  unless  production  takes  on  an 
extra  force  and  that  the  people  must  pay  for,  and 
the  workingman  must  pay  back  a  part  of  his  wages. 
What  better  off  is  he,  and  what  better  off  is  busi- 
ness? Nobody  is  better  off  but  everybody  is  worse 
off. 

But  that  is  not  all.  The  union  in  the  depths  of  its 
foolish  counsels  decides  that  there  are  too  many  men 
with  first-class  incomes  as  plumbers  and  tinsmiths, 
as  electricians  and  steam-fitters.  It  is  best  to  limit 
the  number.  That  can  be  done  by  making  the 
services  of  the  apprentices,  the  helpers,  longer,  and 
the  result  is  that  young  men  seek  other  callings  and 
the  trade  is  short-handed  enough  for  every  man  to 
have  a  job,  but  not  for  all  the  jobs  to  have  the  men 
they  want.  The  screws  are  turned  down  still  harder, 
for  if  the  job  seeks  competent  men  out  of  the  union 
a  strike  is  ordered  in  the  business,  even  if  it  is  a 
hospital,  that  is  secretly  declared  unfair.  But  this 
is  not  the  end.  It  is  an  unwritten  law  that  members 
of  the  union  shall  not  overwork  even  their  short 
hours,  and  if  they  are  demanded  in  emergency  cases, 
they  shall  have  pay  and  a  half  or  double  pay.  All 

202 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

of  this  has  a  direct  bearing  upon  the  high  cost  of 
living.  The  two  hours  taken  out  of  a  day,  the  men 
cut  out  of  the  profession  or  calling,  all  have  to  be 
paid  for,  and  the  laboring  man  has  to  pay  his  share 
in  the  high  cost  of  living. 

Our  country  has  had  to  bear  much  and  not  the 
least  from  its  own  citizens.  But  some  day  they  will 
learn  the  lesson.  No  class  of  men  can  organize 
themselves  exclusively  for  themselves  and  prosper. 
No  class  can  count  the  country  out  or  give  it  a  second 
place  without  doing  themselves  equal,  if  not  greater, 
injury.  Our  roots  are  in  the  American  soil.  We 
must  cultivate  the  soil.  No  man  can  live  to  himself, 
nor  die  to  himself  here,  and  no  class  of  men  can 
reach  the  estate  of  another  class  by  displacing  that 
class.  They  must  be  a  class  of  their  own.  What 
men  in  our  country  have  become  conspicuously  great 
by  adopting  other  men's  thinking  and  acting?  Suc- 
cessful men  explore  their  own  fields  and  make  their 
own  discoveries.  Those  who  hang  on  with  them 
hang  upon  their  coat  tails.  It  is  the  glory  of  Ameri- 
cans that  the  men  who  count  go  out  into  the  open. 
They  are  not  hibernates.  They  go  from  all  manner 
of  homes,  some  of  them  the  most  humble  and  ob- 
scure, from  the  farms  of  New  England  to  the  plan- 
tations of  the  South,  from  the  homes  of  laborers  and 
artisans  to  the  homes  of  the  tradesman  and  manu- 
facturer. Some  stay  and  succeed  by  putting  new 
discoveries  into  the  old  business.  More  carry  their 
genius  to  the  ever-opening  fields  of  a  vast  country 

203 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

that  always  has  and  always  will  welcome  every  man 
whose  power  is  within  himself. 

There  always  will  be  room  for  every  man.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  fence  around  any  man  to  keep  him 
out  of  your  lot.  Such  methods  are  unworthy  of  a 
country  like  this.  Its  plan  is  more  generous,  its 
highways  are  more  open.  It  is  a  land  of  oppor- 
tunities. Labor  unions  as  now  managed,  but  not  as 
they  might  be,  are  a  wrong  interpretation  of 
America.  And  if  men  cannot  be  permitted  to 
widen  them  out  to  the  horizons  of  the  country's 
outer  opportunities  by  increased  proficiency,  self- 
respecting  men  with  any  appreciation  of  what  their 
country  is  ought  to  get  out  of  them  and  leave  them 
to  the  narrow  visions  and  selfish  purposes  that  have 
cursed  them  and  blighted  their  grand  possibilities. 
We  want  nothing  less  than  America  for  Americans. 
We  have  no  room  in  this  country,  except  in  their 
own  hibernating  dens,  for  men  without  large  sympa- 
thies, without  a  hand  for  every  man  who  is  a  true 
American  and  who  is  making  earnest  effort  to  carry 
his  part  of  the  apportioned  burdens  of  his  land.  It 
is  a  crime  which  we  cannot  afford  to  permit,  that  any 
man  in  this  country  should  be  forced  by  any  body  of 
men  out  of  his  own  choice  with  his  own  labor.  It  is 
an  invaluable  right  fought  out  here  in  the  beginning, 
and  it  came  as  a  legacy  handed  down  with  his 
father's  flintlock  musket.  The  son  made  a  rifle  to 
replace  the  flintlock  because  he  had  an  opportunity. 
It  is  un-American  to  tell  a  man,  any  man,  what  the 

204 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

limits  of  his  opportunity  are  to  be,  within  what  as- 
sociations and  in  what  companionship.  His  very 
thinking  and  aspirations,  which  may  differ  by  far 
distances,  his  sense  of  justice,  his  conception  of  citi- 
zenship, all  may  travel  on  a  different  gauge.  But 
if  he  is  to  earn  his  living  and  support  his  young 
family,  he  must  abandon  all  of  these  and  take  with 
his  privilege  the  narrow,  selfish,  disloyal  concepts  of 
life.  There  are  thousands  of  men  who  will  not  sel 
out  at  the  price.  It  makes  an  American's  blood  run 
hot  to  see  the  quality  of  men  who  assume  the  re- 
sponsibility and  privilege  of  determining  what  he 
:haracter  of  industry  is  to  be  in  a  community,  ;  id 
decide  the  life  question  of  man's  employmt  it, 
rhere  he  shall  work  or  whether  he  shall  wen 
it  all.  In  heaven's  name,  where  did  they  get  the 
•ight  to  dictate  to  men  these  questions?  It  did  not 
:ome  from  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
rhat  laws  conveyed  the  privilege?  Who  are  they? 
rhence  have  they  come  that  they  shall  walk  into 
rour  office  and  order  men  out  of  your  factory  upon  a 
threat  that  if  you  disobey,  they  will  stop  every  ma- 
chine and  shut  the  business  down  and  make  junk  of 
the  machines?  And  what  kind  of  men  are  they  who 
submit  to  it?  Are  they  Americans?  Do  they  care 
more  for  a  dollar  than  they  do  for  their  country's 
freedom?  What  forces  us  to  fight  for  freedom 
across  the  sea  and  not  for  like  causes  at  home? 
How  did  these  dictators  come  to  the  business  office, 
with  authority,  with  a  mandate,  with  an  order?  Yes, 

205 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

they,  the  destroyers  of  your  business,  came  with  an 
order.  It  was  promulgated  by  a  small  body  of  men, 
who  did  not  make  your  business,  who  have  not  a 
member  of  their  organization  that  could  create  such 
a  business.  If  he  could,  he  would  have  done  it,  and 
would  have  claimed  the  right  to  manage  it  without 
dictation,  as  you,  under  the  laws  of  your  country, 
have  a  right  to  do.  The  order  is  sent  out  by  a  body 
of  men  upon  their  own  initiative,  who  have  nothing 
upon  which  to  live  but  such  a  business  as  you  have 
made  possible  by  your  investment  and  the  working- 
men  whom  you  choose  to  employ.  They  are  men 
who  do  not  support  their  organization  upon  its 
merits  by  rules  that  make  its  members  the  most 
desirable  men  in  the  town  for  the  shops  to  hire. 
Such  a  club  or  union  would  not  need  any  walking 
delegates  to  place  the  members.  If  others  did  not 
compete  with  them,  they  would  seek  such  unions  for 
proficiency.  The  business  man  would  need  no  per- 
suasion to  give  first  place  to  union  men.  It  would 
be  determined  by  a  law  of  quality  which  would  make 
its  own  way.  The  question  of  right  could  not  be 
raised.  How  it  can  help  being  raised  now  is  puz- 
zling in  the  extreme.  No  day  is  there  of  the  present 
practice  that  does  not  degrade  us.  It  degrades  the 
men  who  are  dictated  to  by  it.  It  degrades  the 
manufacturers  who  yield  their  divine  rights  supinely 
and  cowardly  to  men  so  degraded  that  they  will  in- 
sist upon  such  terms,  that  they  will  dare  to  threaten 
property  and  business  and  life. 

206 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

The  country's  claim  is  a  first  claim  upon  every 
man  who  makes  his  home  within  it,  not  only  for  the 
unsurpassed  institutions  of  freedom  but  because  it 
is  the  land  of  his  home.  It  provides  the  first  oppor- 
tunity for  his  children  as  it  has  for  himself.  No 
conditions  which  he  does  not  make  himself  can  sub- 
ject him  to  an  inferior  station.  He  has  a  right,  and 
it  becomes  his  duty  to  teach  it  to  his  children  that 
they  have  the  right,  that  any  man  has  in  all  the 
broad  land.  The  poor  may  hope  to  be  rich,  for 
nearly  all  of  the  rich  have  been  poor.  We  have 
no  aristocracy  of  wealth  here.  It  has  been 
truthfully  remarked  that  "it  is  only  one  gen- 
eration from  shirt  sleeves  to  shirt  sleeves."  uWe 
are  too  near  to  leather  aprons  to  paint  coats- 
of-arms  upon  our  coach  doors."  The  men  who 
are  cursing  the  rich  are  cursing  their  own  kind 
who  have  succeeded.  They  are  the  only  men  who 
are  trying  to  make  a  caste  among  us  by  making 
it  impossible  for  their  own  kind  to  improve  their 
condition. 

The  doors  swing  inward  into  the  halls  of  highest 
legislature  and  men,  great  men,  great  at  the  top  are 
needed  there.  And  in  no  country  does  so  large  a 
proportion  of  men  equipped  intellectually  come 
from  the  homes  of  the  workingmen.  They  make 
up  the  bulk  of  the  college  boys.  There  is  scarcely  a 
rich  man's  college  in  America.  If  there  is  one  so 
called,  its  doors  are  open  to  poor  boys  upon  the  same 
terms.  Every  profession  from  the  ministry  through 

207 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

is  manned  almost  entirely  with  the  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  homes  of  humble  circumstances.  America 
has  open  doors  for  all  people.  Opportunity  is  upon 
the  archway  of  every  avenue  that  leads  the  way  in 
front  of  all  aspirations  from  the  lowest  state  to  the 
highest  renown.  The  processions  are  from  every 
station  and  walk  in  our  glorious  country.  Every 
man  is  free  for  everything,  for  every  calling  and  am- 
bition except  the  choice  of  where  he  shall  perform 
his  day's  labor.  He  can  join  any  church.  He  can 
attend  any  college  or  technical  school.  He  can 
choose  any  business.  But  he  cannot  say  where  he 
shall  work  without  a  card  from  a  company  of  aristo- 
crats who  have  stolen  out  of  our  freedom,  our  in- 
alienable liberties  of  what  they  claim  is  their  right 
in  the  case.  It  is  the  one  diseased  spot  in  our 
economy,  and  the  sooner  the  surgeon's  knife  goes  to 
the  last  fiber  and  root  of  it,  the  easier  will  it  be 
eradicated,  and  the  safer  will  be  our  national 
economy.  It  is  the  only  thing  which  adds  to  the  em- 
barrassments of  business  in  manufacture,  husbandry, 
and  commerce,  and  imposes  a  greater  burden  rela- 
tively upon  the  poor  man's  home  and  reduces  his 
children  nearer  to  serfdom.  The  only  thing  that 
stands  in  the  way  of  the  poor  man  is  the  poor  man's 
poor  judgment  in  the  plain  things  that  concern  him- 
self. When  he  finds  himself  differing  from  the 
common  economy,  things  exacted  of  him  which  in- 
fringe upon  his  freedom,  and  which  classify  him  by 
himself  under  the  pretense  of  benefit,  he  should 

208 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  COUNTRY 

answer,  "My  country  is  good  enough  for  me  upon 
the  plan  of  liberty  for  all  men." 

No  man  has  so  much  at  stake  in  his  country  as  the 
workingman.  It  is  from  it  that  springs  his  hope 
of  existence,  to  say  nothing  of  the  happiness  of  his 
family  and  the  promise  of  future  good.  His  in- 
vestments are  more  literally  in  it  than  are  those  of 
the  capitalist  whom  he  is  taught  by  fools  to  hate. 
The  rich  have  a  measure  of  independence.  He  is 
not  limited  to  one  country  nor  to  one  class  of  associ- 
ates. The  poor  man's  home  and  habits  of  liveli- 
hood, his  employment  is  a  fixed  condition.  Values 
must  be  brought  to  him.  He  must  make  it  of  inter- 
est for  investments  to  be  made  in  his  community. 
Whatever  his  calling  and  trade  or  labor,  it  is  linked 
up  to  every  useful  pursuit  in  the  country,  and  when 
he  goes  out  in  the  morning  with  his  dinner  pail  he 
should  go  with  the  feeling — and  a  proud  one  too — 
that  he  is  going  out  that  day  to  serve  his  country. 
The  men  he  saw  a  few  months  ago  marching  away 
to  stirring  music,  with  martial  tread,  excited  the 
shouts  of  their  neighbors  because  they  were  going  to 
serve  their  country,  and  nothing  should  be  detracted 
from  that  applause.  Gloriously  they  served  their 
country,  and  they  are  worthy  of  all  praise. 

But  did  they  serve  their  country  more  than  the 
thousands  of  workingmen,  mechanics,  and  laborers 
who  go  out  of  their  homes  every  morning  to  produce 
those  things  indispensable  to  a  country's  develop- 
ment and  sustenance?  But  the  soldier  went  to  death 

209 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  severed  limbs.  So,  too  often,  the  workingman. 
It  is  said,  and  we  believe  truthfully,  that  twice  more 
men  lose  a  leg  or  an  arm  in  the  labor  callings,  man 
for  man,  than  in  warfare,  besides  thousands  injured 
in  other  ways.  It  is  a  mistake  for  the  workingman 
not  to  feel  that  his  work  is  patriotic,  and  it  is  a 
mistake  for  him  not  to  feel  his  responsibility  of  it  on 
that  side.  Can  it  be  that  such  universal  strikes  as 
we  are  having  in  nearly  every  trade  can  affect  only 
the  investor  and  contractor  and  men  chiefly  of 
money  known  as  capitalists?  It  is  a  condition  which 
lacerates  every  nerve  of  the  whole  land  and  must  be 
paid  for  in  the  final  analysis  by  the  workingman 
whose  fate  rises  and  falls  as  the  tide  of  his  country's 
business  is  flowing  in  or  out.  This  is  a  case  where 
man  makes  the  tides.  Foolish  is  the  man  who  does 
not  see  that  what  he  does  must  be  done  earnestly  for 
his  country.  The  soldier  sacrificed  everything  for 
the  common  cause.  It  was  the  earnest  objective, 
and  it  was  only  indirectly  his  country.  It  was  di- 
rectly another  man's  country,  also  it  was  a  common 
freedom.  Strange  if  the  man  with  a  home,  with  a 
wife  and  little  ones,  should  not  feel  a  more  intense 
patriotism.  His  country  cannot  be  sacrificed  to 
wages.  There  must  be  enough  resources  in  my 
country  to  give  every  man  a  living,  but  my  country  is 
before  my  living.  My  country  first,  good  or  bad. 
If  good,  I  will  rejoice  in  it.  If  bad,  I  will  give  my- 
self to  improve  it.  I  will  not  hinder  it  and  obstruct 
it.  I  will  help  it. 

210 


CHAPTER  X 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

WE  have  seen  the  workingman's  country,  the  op- 
portunities and  peculiar  advantages  which  it  offers 
to  the  toilers,  the  artisans,  and  even  to  the  poor. 
We  see  its  men  who  begin  with  no  investment  but 
their  wits  and  their  hands  passing  into  positions  of 
emolument  and  honor,  and  leaving  their  families 
possessed  of  great  estates,  in  many  cases.  What  do 
they  give  their  country  in  exchange  for  it  all?  A 
patriot  puts  his  country  before  all  others  and  all  else. 
His  sacrifices  go  to  the  extent  of  his  life  and  his 
fortune,  great  or  small.  If  he  finds  himself  in  any 
organization,  be  it  church  or  charity  or  economics, 
which  puts  anything  before  his  country,  or  any  flag, 
red  or  black,  above  Old  Glory,  it  is  time  for  him  to 
inquire  earnestly  as  to  the  place  his  citizenship  is 
occupying.  Is  it  where  it  should  be?  Can  he  place 
anything  before  his  loyalty  to  the  institutions  of 
human  freedom?  Can  he  allow  any  authority  or 
compact  to  become  a  superior  obligation?  Can  he 
subscribe  to  any  constitution  that  will  displace  the 
constitution  of  his  country,  for  any  purpose  what- 
ever? Is  he  in  any  club  or  union  which  by  any 
dictatorship  can  issue  orders  which  supersede  and 
assert  an  overruling  control  over  the  laws  of  his 

211 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

land?  A  man  who  enlists  in  such  a  governing  body 
and  places  himself  in  defiance  of  his  country's  laws 
will  find  himself  in  an  ugly  list  where  loyal  men  are 
not  catalogued. 

There  are  certain  very  apparent  reasons  which 
make  labor  unions,  as  they  have  come  to  be  managed, 
camps  of  questionable  loyalty.  First,  Do  their  leaders 
openly  declare  themselves  against  the  control  and 
interference  of  the  government?  Second,  Do  they 
order  strikes  at  the  business  of  the  country  without 
regard  to  the  effect  upon  the  common  peace  and  the 
common  interests  of  the  community  or  the  state? 
Third,  Do  they,  as  reported,  ever  harbor  men  of 
boasted  principles  opposed  to  the  institutions  of  our 
land?  Fourth,  Are  the  bomb-thrower  and  incen- 
diary traced  to  a  union  or  federation  of  unions,  as 
was  shown  in  the  San  Francisco  and  Los  Angeles 
cases?  Fifth,  Do  they  insist  that  all  things  shall  yield 
to  incessant  and  inconsiderate  demands  for  greater 
wage  without  regard  or  concern  for  the  disturbance 
of  economic  demands  of  their  fellow  men  and  the 
rights  of  their  neighbors  for  fair  prices  and  a  just 
cost  of  living?  Sixth,  Are  they  not  reckless  of  the 
destruction  of  human  life  in  their  controversies  and 
strikes?  At  no  time  have  they  given  such  evidence 
of  these  things  as  now.  Is  it  only  a  coincidence  that 
three  of  the  great  interests  directly  related  to  our 
national  prosperity  and  to  the  safety  of  the  people 
should  have  been  selected  as  objects  of  the  arbitrary 
and  inhuman  strike?  The  railroads  were  assailed 

212 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

in  harvest  time  and  are  menaced  again  when  carry- 
ing coal  and  distributing  food.  The  steel  industry 
was  attacked  when  the  country  was  trying  to  re- 
cover from  the  paralysis  of  war  which  arrested, 
by  government  order,  all  building  operations.  The 
coal  mines  were  closed  at  the  opening  of  winter, 
which  meant  not  only  the  stopping  of  locomotives 
on  their  tracks  but  the  closing  down  of  manufacture 
and  throwing  upon  the  streets  in  winter  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  workingmen  from  contented 
employments,  and  the  suffering  of  whole  communi- 
ties for  fuel  and  the  starvation  of  thousands  of  the 
poor.  Was  this  loyal?  Was  this  common  human- 
ity? No  unjust  wage  could  possibly  excuse  this  in- 
humanity. 

There  is  not  in  it  an  instinct  of  loyalty  to  which  an 
appeal  can  be  made,  nor  is  there  an  instinct  of  hu- 
manity for  which  an  argument  can  be  presented.  We 
have  had  nothing  in  the  application  of  union  prin- 
ciples in  this  country  which  has  reached  such  a  degree 
of  indifference  to  the  common  safety  and  that  is  posi- 
tively so  lacking  in  moral  sense  as  the  coal  strike.  It 
is  easily  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  workers  at  the 
mines  are  men  of  the  lower  type,  the  foreigners,  but 
it  is  amazing  that  men  of  supposed  intelligence  and 
loyalty  should  lead  ignorant  men  into  defiance  of  our 
courts.  It  is  not  a  case  of  underpaid  and  protesting 
men  threatened  with  cold  and  hunger.  It  is  an 
effort  to  force  their  higher  wage  by  imperiling 
the  innocent.  It  is  a  demand  for  increased  pay 

213 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

which  is  reckless  of  consequences.  A  great  utility 
concerns  all  of  the  people  and  takes  on  the  nature  of 
a  patriotic  service.  It  cannot  be  decided  on  grounds 
of  wage  merely. 

The  railroad  employees  have  received  increased 
wages  which  have  cost  the  government  millions  of 
money  beyond  traffic  receipts.  The  steel  laborers 
are  receiving  astonishing  wages,  surpassing  the  in- 
come of  many  of  the  professions.  We  have  vivid 
illustrations  of  what  certain  men,  whom  we  will  not 
characterize,  will  do  if  they  get  into  their  hands  the 
instruments  of  destruction  with  which  to  work  their 
purposes  and  passions. 

The  most  serious  thing  about  it  is  that  there  are 
enough  respectable  men  of  American  birth  or  of  un- 
doubted loyalty  to  give  a  certain  respectability  to  the 
efforts  of  the  coarse  and  riotous  elements.  If  our 
respected  neighbors  and  fellow  citizens  would  with- 
draw entirely  from  organizations  which  wear  the 
brand  of  treason  against  their  country  until  such  time 
as  a  reform  may  displace  the  disloyal  practices  that 
now  threaten  the  land  with  bloody  revolution,  they 
would  carry  a  weight  of  tranquillity  and  order  which 
nothing  could  resist.  The  ignorant  foreign  menace 
in  our  mills  and  shops  would  disappear  if  the  lead- 
ers were  to  receive  notice  that  the  thinking  men  of 
the  unions  insist  upon  first  consideration  for  the 
interests  of  the  whole  people.  There  are  problems 
wider  than  mines,  longer  than  railroads,  that 
vastly  overtop  the  twenty-four  hours  a  week  or  ten 

214 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

dollars  a  day  of  men  whose  whole  concept  of  citizen- 
ship consists  of  pay  beyond  the  dreams  of  fiction. 
The  country  has  no  right  and  no  duty  so  great  as  its 
duty  to  put  forth  the  claims  of  the  whole  people. 
The  entire  people  deserve  consideration  which  re- 
duces the  workingman's  hours  and  wage  to  a  mini- 
mum. He  should  receive  all  that  his  labor  is  worth. 
He  receives  more  than  the  school  teacher,  the 
store  clerk.  It  is  high  time  that  he  were  halted 
at  the  threshold  of  interests  as  great  as  he 
represents  which  are  toiling  on  under  the  burden 
which  his  excessive  wage  imposes.  One  might 
think  that  all  that  this  country  has  in  hand  and  its 
only  obligation  is  to  stop  all  business,  all  manufac- 
ture, all  transportation,  all  mines,  annually  until  it 
adjusts  the  wages  satisfactorily  to  the  demand  of 
hordes  of  immigrants,  or  those  of  immigrant  extrac- 
tion, that  have  become  crazed  by  the  fabulous  pay 
envelope  that  would  have  been  in  one  year  "unim- 
agined  riches  in  the  land  from  which  they  came. 
There  are  others  in  this  country  besides  union  wage 
earners.  There  are  others  besides  Poles,  Italians, 
Greeks,  and  Slovaks,  who  have  a  claim  that  must 
be  heard.  There  are  small  tradesmen  and  manu- 
facturers; there  are  farmers  and  builders  of  homes; 
there  are  steam  and  electric  plants;  there  are  car- 
riers of  all  kinds;  and  there  are  teachers  and  preach- 
ers and  lawyers  and  doctors  of  the  villages  and  small 
cities  of  small  salaries  and  fees,  thousands  of  them. 
The  enumeration  could  be  extended.  They  do  not 

215 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

strike.  They  are  too  intelligent  and  loyal  for 
demagogues  to  attempt  to  lead  them  into  any  conflict 
against  the  common  good  to  secure  selfish  interests. 
But  they  have  a  right  to  insist  that  the  perpetual 
agitation  by  persons  of  less  claim  than  they,  which 
is  pushing  the  cost  of  living  beyond  their  reach,  shall 
cease,  and  that  the  conspirators  who  are  assailing 
our  government  and  the  agitators  who  are  constantly 
stirring  up  strife  among  the  dangerous  elements  of 
the  laboring  class  shall  go  behind  secure  bars  or 
across  the  seas  whence  they  came. 

Duty  to  our  country  never  was  plainer.  Our  time 
is  not  too  long  to  stop  a  revolution  beside  which  the 
much  quoted  and  orated  French  Revolution  will  be  a 
passing  spasm.  With  the  insidious  attack  upon  the 
police  and  the  bold  claim  that  the  army  shall  be 
unionized,  and  with  the  completion  of  the  ultimate 
plans  of  the  vast  conspiracy,  where  is  the  hope  of 
our  country?  With  one  element  working  through 
the  unions  to  overthrow  the  government  and  dictat- 
ing the  social  order,  with  millions  organizing  for 
selfish  ends  without  regard  to  consequences  to  the 
country  and  to  their  neighbors,  how  long  will  it  be 
before  the  most  terrible  civil  and  social  war  the 
world  has  ever  known  will  be  upon  us?  Already 
the  forces  have  reached  preparations  which  seriously 
threaten  the  country.  Since  the  war  closed  a  thou- 
sand strikes  have  developed  all  over  the  land  and  in 
every  form  of  business.  They  cannot  be  for  higher 
pay.  The  workingman  has  shown  a  modicum  of 

216 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

modesty  in  urging  a  higher  wage  and  is  now  coached 
to  say  that  he  is  contending  for  his  right  to  organize 
and  bargain  and  strike.  But  that  is  only  prelimi- 
nary. His  leaders  are  giving  the  real  contention 
when  they  charge  the  trouble  not  to  the  capitalist  or 
contractor,  but  to  the  government.  The  whole 
order  of  things  is  wrong.  The  purpose  is  to  over- 
throw every  opposing  force  and  to  control  legisla- 
ture, courts,  and  officers  of  the  law.  Nothing  could 
be  more  shrewd.  The  outward  appeal  is  for  the 
poor.  The  charge  is  cruelty  and  brutality  to  the 
oppressed  workingman.  He  is  excited  by  having 
his  home  contrasted  with  that  of  the  rich  who  a  few 
years  ago  worked  at  the  same  forge  or  with  the 
trowel  beside  him.  He  is  not  allowed  to  think  that 
there  may  be  an  explanation  in  himself.  It  is  all  an 
oppressive  system  under  which  he  lives.  He  is  told 
that  he  and  his  fellows  made  the  business  and  the 
plants,  and  that  the  profits  belong  to  them.  The 
government  contests  that  claim  and  defines  property 
rights  and  protects  those  who  hold  manufacturing 
plants  and  the  profits  from  them  in  the  hands  of 
their  owners.  Before  he  can  break  in  upon  them 
and  secure  them,  the  government  must  be  broken 
down.  That  is  the  doctrine  taught  for  years  by 
the  gutter  orators.  We  have  laughed  at  it,  but  it 
has  spread  to  the  union.  It  has  been  talked  in  the 
saloon.  It  has  been  revolved  in  the  brain  of  the 
discontented  laborer  and  his  wife  and  their  neighbor, 
and  to-day  millions  of  men  are  being  urged  to  con- 

217 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

test  the  question  as  one  of  personal  liberty,  and  the 
very  doctrines  of  America  are  being  used  as  a  screen 
to  cover  the  secret  plans  and  propaganda  of  the  most 
dangerous  foes  who  have  ever  imperiled  our  land. 

If  the  red  socialism  has  so  far  got  control  of  our 
labor  organizations  in  so  short  a  time  as  to  threaten 
the  government  with  cool  impunity  and  to  defy  its 
highest  lawmaking  bodies,  what  would  there  be  but 
blood  and  fierce  revolution  if  these  insidious  forces 
could  capture  the  greatest  industries  of  the  country 
— the  railroads,  the  steel  plants,  and  the  coal  mines? 
And  if  they  added  to  these,  as  is  being  planned  and 
urged,  the  federating  of  the  farmer,  death  would 
have  to  strike  but  a  short  hand  blow  to  capture  the 
republic. 

There  is  not  a  more  promising  country  in  the 
world  in  which  to  plant  the  standard  of  a  universal 
Bolshevism.  What  blind  folly  for  any  to  warn  us 
from  newspaper  columns  not  to  talk  of  Bolshevism 
and  the  I.  W.  W.  as  imprudent  and  irritating!  We 
have  had  enough  of  that  idiocy.  It  is  time  to  cry 
aloud  and  spare  not.  It  is  time  to  warn  our  neighbor 
that  treason  is  federated  against  his  land  and  coun- 
try by  the  alien,  and  that  it  means  his  cottage,  his 
savings  bank,  his  wife,  and  his  liberty  in  the  fall  of 
human  law  and  human  rights  in  organic  government. 
It  is  time  to  urge  him  to  abandon  an  organization, 
however  good  may  have  been  its  original  plans, 
which  seems  to  be  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  foes 
of  our  country.  The  union  is  fast  becoming  the 

218 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

property  of  the  leaders  of  the  poor  dupes  who  fall 
to  their  schemes. 

To-day  the  men  who  are  prospering  by  strikes 
and  the  general  agitation  among  the  men  are  the  lead- 
ers who  live  in  first-class  hotels  and  travel  through 
the  country  in  parlor  cars  and  sport  a  green  bay  tree 
fame  before  legislative  committees  and  arbitrative 
councils.  They  lose  no  wage.  Their  homes  are 
on  no  short  allowance.  They  are  not  shot  in  street 
riots.  And  when  the  revolution  comes  they  will 
order  out  the  firing  squads,  and  they  will  run  away 
from  their  desolation  when  the  smoldering  embers 
of  the  most  just  and  the  fairest  government  that 
ever  blessed  mankind  cries  to  heaven  against  them. 
Who  will  be  the  ruined  in  that  hour,  who  the  dead? 
The  only  friends  the  workingman  ever  had,  the  men 
who  built  the  factory  where  he  worked,  the  men  who 
financied  the  business  which  shared  the  profits  in  his 
wage,  the  men  who  built  his  dispensaries  and  his 
hospitals  and  orphan  homes  and  asylums,  the  men 
who  created  the  sanitary  conditions  which  provided 
health  to  his  home  and  conducted  savings  banks  to 
keep  safer  his  earnings  and  pay  him  an  income  on 
them  that  soon  added  substantially  to  his  wages,  the 
men  who  founded  his  colleges.  Who  will  build  up 
the  ruin  again  and  start  the  fires  in  the  boilers  of  the 
factories  and  set  the  foolish  dupes,  who  destroyed 
themselves,  to  work  again?  Not  the  traitors  who 
ran  away,  but  men  just  like  those  who  died  fighting 
the  murderers  of  their  country.  The  same  plans 

219 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

must  come  back.  The  same  old  order  must  be  re- 
established. For  six  thousand  years  the  world  has 
found  nothing  better,  not  anything  which  can  be 
possibly  substituted. 

If  I  am  an  alarmist,  I  am  not  alone.  In  the 
Adirondacks,  in  the  clear,  balsamic  air  and  the 
transparent  light  there,  these  thoughts  pressed  upon 
me  and  compelled  utterance.  But  I  have  discovered 
that  the  clash  and  roar  of  the  city  was  sounding  the 
alarm  in  the  ears  of  philosophers  and  profound 
thinkers  there.  In  Harvey's  Weekly  have  appeared 
the  following  warnings,  to  which  we  all  will  do  well 
to  take  heed: 

With  over  five  hundred  newspapers,  magazines, 
and  pamphlets  in  every  language,  even  including 
English,  openly  preaching  the  revolutionary  over- 
throw of  our  government,  and  anarchist  orators 
howling  it  to  mobs  all  over  the  country  for  a  year 
or  more,  the  federal  authorities  have  found  out  that 
there  is  a  propaganda  of  this  sort  going  on !  They 
have  found  out  what  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
in  the  country,  of  ordinary  intelligence,  has  known 
for  months  and  years! 

They  have  found  out  also,  let  us  hope,  that  back 
of  this  outbreak  of  strikes  from  one  end  of  the  coun- 
try to  the  other — over  one  thousand  six  hundred  in 
the  last  eight  months — there  looms  this  same  sinister 
Bolshevist  menace.  They  have  found  out  that 
strikes  have  been  instigated  and  precipitated  by  this 
same  gang  of  brazen  traitors  who,  once  the  strike  is 
under  way,  make  it  the  vehicle  for  the  inculcation  of 
their  creed  of  wreck  and  ruin  for  our  American  form 

220 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

of  government :  of  property  seizure  by  mob  violence ; 
the  substitution  of  mob  government  for  government 
by  law. 

The  federal  authorities,  we  are  informed,  have  at 
last  found  out  the  notorious,  and  are  "in  possession 
of  evidence"  of  it.  Possibly  the  shrewd  suspicions 
of  the  federal  sleuths  were  aroused  by  some  such 
utterances  as  these,  taken  from  an  I.  W.  W.  pam- 
phlet scattered  by  thousands  over  the  country  and 
particularly  in  the  innumerable  strike  centers.  We 
quote  from  the  quotation  in  the  Times : 

"When  the  proletariat  shall  have  overthrown 
capitalism,  the  I.  W.  W.  will  stand,  ready  made,  the 
preestablished  government  of  the  new  order.  It 
will  not  be  necessary  to  call  constituent  conventions. 
It  will  not  be  necessary  to  create  Soviets.  It  will  not 
be  necessary  to  lavish  the  precious  energies  of  the 
proletariat  in  the  desperate  experiment  of  politics, 
for  the  I.  W.  W.,  which  will  have  fought  the  revolu- 
tion, will  also  pass  over  the  framework  of  the  new 
communism.  The  existing  parliamentary  govern- 
ment will  crumble  into  uselessness.  The  industrial 
unions  will  become  the  supreme  national  power. 
Each  industrial  union  will  expropriate  the  capitalists 
from  its  industry.  The  functions  of  industrial  man- 
agement will  be  taken  over  by  the  union." 

This  is  the  sort  of  stuff  that  has  been  spread 
broadcast  in  print  and  howled  from  anarchist 
rostrums  for  months,  until,  as  Senator  Poindexter 
put  it,  "the  country  is  seething  with  violations  of 
the  law  so  far  as  revolutionary  utterances  are  con- 
cerned." And  the  federal  authorities  having  the 
evidence  of  all  this,  why  in  the  name  of  heaven  do 
not  the  federal  authorities  act?  Why  are  these  an- 
archistic agitators  allowed  to  run  at  large?  There 

221 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

are  laws  in  abundance  under  which  they  may  be 
jailed,  deported,  hanged  if  need  be.  Why  are  not 
these  laws  enforced? 

Senator  Poindexter  has  offered  a  resolution  call- 
ing upon  the  attorney-general  for  an  explanation  of 
the  Department  of  Justice's  strange  laxity  in  this 
grave  matter.  It  is  a  timely  resolution.  If  it  re- 
sults in  stirring  the  federal  authorities  to  action,  it 
will  be  a  service  to  the  country  of  which  the  country 
is  sorely  in  need.  There  is  but  one  remedy  for  the 
anarchistic  vermin,  foreign  or  native,  now  swarming 
with  impunity  all  over  the  country,  and  that  remedy 
is  extermination. 

"Nationalization  of  industries"  is  the  glib  shibbo- 
leth of  the  day.  It  is  demanded  by  the  revolution- 
ists, advocated  by  the  trades  unionists,  and  wor- 
shiped as  the  Beauty  of  Holiness  by  the  Parlor 
Bolshevists.  "The  nationalization  of  mines,"  says 
the  London  Daily  Herald,  the  British  labor  organ, 
"is  the  question  immediately  at  issue,  but  is,  of 
course,  a  precursor  to  a  complete  policy  of  national- 
ization of  industry.  Here  is  the  battle  joined." 
As  in  Great  Britain,  so  in  the  United  States.  The 
nationalization  demands  of  the  railroad  brother- 
hoods, made  only  a  few  weeks  ago,  are  still  remem- 
bered, and  are  being  echoed  and  repeated  by  in- 
numerable strikers  and  agitators  to-day.  On  that 
issue  "is  the  battle  joined." 

Now,  there  would  be  ample  reason  for  opposing 
and  rejecting  this  demand  on  the  simple  and  obvious 
ground  of  ultra  vires.  It  is  a  demand  which  the 

222 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

trades  unions  as  such  have  no  business  to  make.  It 
is  political,  not  economical.  It  is  radically  and  es- 
sentially different  from  a  demand  for  higher  wages, 
shorter  hours,  profit-sharing,  right  of  organization, 
collective  bargaining,  or  anything  of  that  sort. 
These  are  economic  demands  which  workmen  as 
workmen  have  a  right  to  make.  They  concern  di- 
rectly, primarily,  perhaps  exclusively,  the  employees 
and  their  employers.  But  the  demand  for  govern- 
ment ownership  of  industries  does  not  concern  them 
any  more  than  it  does  every  other  citizen  of  the 
nation.  It  is  a  political  policy,  of  universal  interest, 
and  is  to  be  determined  not  by  the  wishes  of  any  one 
class,  however  numerous  or  respectable,  but  by  the 
deliberate  will  and  judgment  of  the  entire  nation. 
For  labor  unions  to  demand  government  ownership 
and  to  go  on  strike  to  compel  its  adoption  is  as  un- 
reasonable as  it  would  be  for  them  thus  to  demand 
and  to  strike  for  election  of  the  President  by  popular 
vote  instead  of  by  the  electoral  college,  or  for  aboli- 
tion of  the  federal  income  tax  system. 

There  is,  however,  a  still  more  serious  objection 
to  this  demand.  It  is  suggested  by  the  fact,  made 
more  and  more  obtrusive  day  by  day,  that  these  very 
men  who  most  vociferously  demand  government 
ownership  are  foremost  in  flouting  and  defying  gov- 
ernment authority  after  it  has  been  extended  over 
industries.  That  has  been  and  is  to-day  the  case  in 
this  country.  It  has  been  while  the  railroads  were 
under  government  control  and  operation  that  the 

223 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

most  formidable  strikes  on  them  have  been  planned. 
It  is  under  government  participation  in  the  admin- 
istration of  the  mines  that  coal  miners  have  threat- 
ened the  worst  strike  in  history.  It  was  in  direct 
defiance  of  government  counsel  and  intervention 
that  the  dock  workers  went  on  strike  and  strove  to 
starve  the  great  cities.  Government  control  and 
operation  of  industries  command  no  more  respect 
and  give  no  more  satisfaction  than  private  control 
and  operation;  and  it  is  therefore  obvious  that  if 
government  ownership  should  be  put  into  effect  there 
would  be  no  abatement  of  agitation  and  strikes. 
The  only  change  would  be  that  then  these  would  be 
directed  not  against  individual  or  corporate  em- 
ployers, but  against  the  national  government  it- 
self. 

And  that,  we  must  conclude,  is  what  the  advocates 
of  government  ownership  have  in  mind.  That  is 
the  purpose  of  their  demand.  They  want  to  strike 
against  the  government.  They  want  to  be  in  a 
position  to  coerce  the  government  to  their  will,  by 
the  menace  of  a  universal  strike  of  its  employees  and 
the  consequent  paralysis  of  its  functions.  That  is  to 
say,  they  want  to  place  the  government  of  the  nation 
under  the  control  of  the  labor  unions ;  so  that  a  walk- 
ing delegate  can  go  to  Washington  and  dictate  to 
Congress  what  laws  it  shall  and  shall  not  enact,  and 
to  the  President  what  policy  he  shall  or  shall  not 
pursue  in  either  domestic  or  foreign  affairs.  That 
is  what  government  ownership  would  mean.  It 

224 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

would  mean  not  only  ownership  and  control  of  in- 
dustries by  the  government,  but  also,  and  equally, 
ownership  and  control  of  the  government  by  the 
trades  unions.  It  would  be  government  of  the  na- 
tion by  a  minority  class.  It  would  be,  in  a  word, 
sovietism. 

We  do  not  believe  that  the  American  people  are 
willing  to  accept  such  a  system.  We  have  faith  to 
believe  that,  at  no  matter  what  cost  of  strife  or 
struggle,  they  will  insist  upon  maintaining  what 
Theodore  Parker  once  well  described  as  uthe  Ameri- 
can idea,  ...  a  democracy — that  is,  a  government 
of  all  the  people,  by  all  the  people,  for  all  the 
people."  But  we  warn  them  to-day  that  "eternal 
vigilance  is  the  price  at  which  such  government  is  to 
be  maintained." 

The  only  trouble  with  the  American  people  is  that 
they  will  awaken  too  late.  When  once  aroused  it 
will  be  as  stormy  a  day  for  our  internal  enemies  as  it 
would  be  for  an  invading  army.  But  our  foe  is 
insidious,  plausible,  and  insinuating,  and  we  are  still 
questioning  as  to  his  real  purpose. 

The  United  States  attorney-general  said  of 
the  coal  strike :  "It  would  be  a  more  deadly 
attack  on  the  life  of  the  nation  than  an  invading 
army.  The  facts  present  a  situation  that  chal- 
lenges the  supremacy  of  the  law."  And  this  attack 
is  led  by  leaders  who,  while  defying  the  government, 
are  busy  at  their  infamous  work  undisturbed  by 
officers  of  the  law.  And  the  government  officials 

225 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

publish  their  intentions  not  to  indict  these  men  on 
charges  of  conspiracy  to  reduce  (in  war  time)  the 
production  of  a  necessary  product,  a  product  indis- 
pensable to  life  in  our  winter  climate,  and  to  the 
distribution  of  food. 

General  Leonard  Wood,  whose  words  are  never 
ill-considered,  has  recently  said:  "Roosevelt  stated 
openly  there  was  no  room  in  this  country  for  the  red 
flag,  and  let  me  repeat  there  is  no  room  in  this  coun- 
try for  the  red  flag.  It  is  against  everything  which 
this  country  stands  for — the  home,  the  town,  the 
nation,  public  morality,  private  well-being,  the 
security  of  our  institutions,  everything  that  we  hold 
most  dear.  Kill  it  as  you  would  kill  a  rattle- 
snake, and  smack  those  who  follow  it,  speak  for  it, 
or  support  it.  They  are  dangerous  enemies  of  the 
state." 

It  may  be  said  that  it  is  unfair  to  compare  the 
workingman's  organization  with  the  open  or  secret 
enemies  of  our  country,  but  our  citizens  are  respon- 
sible for  the  acts  of  the  ignorant  foreign  element  of 
the  country  if  they  teach  or  practice  the  right  of  dis- 
loyal attacks,  by  strikes  or  otherwise,  upon  the  peace 
of  the  community.  The  fact  that  they  resort  to 
practices  that  no  other  Americans  under  any  other 
banner  use  to  enforce  their  claims,  and  that  these 
things  have  encouraged  bombs  and  incendiarism, 
and  that  the  authors  of  violence  are  often 
traced  to  the  unions,  is  ground  for  serious  thought 
on  the  part  of  federated  labor  and  for  reform  in 

226 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  PATRIOTISM 

every  union  of  the  land.  It  is  a  direct  and  emphatic 
claim  for  loyalty.  Men  may  and  do  have  a  right  to 
quit  a  job,  but  not  so  as  to  injure  the  plant  or  to 
abridge  the  rights  of  their  fellow  workmen,  nor  have 
they  a  right  to  enter  a  conspiracy  that  will  imperil 
the  life  and  health  or  business  of  their  neighbors. 

It  is  a  poor  loyalty  which  reckons  equivalents. 
One  day  that  question,  "What  shall  we  have  there- 
fore?" entered  the  minds  of  the  followers  of  the 
world's  greatest  Teacher  and  Guide.  It  always  is 
in  the  world.  "Will  it  pay?"  'What  is  there  in  it? 
It  is  a  proper  question  in  a  business  transaction. 
There  a  man  has  a  right  to  ask  it.  There  is  Bible 
authority  for  counting  the  cost  if  one  is  to  build  a 
castle.  But  there  are  things  in  which  such  a  calcula- 
tion is  impossible.  Love  gives  and  does  not  ask 
what  it  is  to  get  in  exchange.  A  parent  does  not  ask 
whether  it  will  pay  to  raise  a  child.  The  less  likely 
it  is  to  pay,  the  more  affection  and  care  are  bestowed 
upon  it.  Children  who  have  come  to  the  responsi- 
bilities of  the  old  homestead  do  not  ask  whether 
it  will  pay  to  keep  father  and  mother  who  are  wait- 
ing beside  the  hearthstone  after  the  active  years 
have  passed  by. 

There  was  an  old-fashioned  love  of  country  of 
which  we  heard  much  when  we  were  boys.  And  it 
was  love  of  country  which  faced  death  and  endured 
all  things  for  the  love  of  country.  The  new  doc- 
trine of  getting  as  much,  for  as  little  as  possible, 
from  our  country,  is  not  indigenous  to  our  land.  It 

227 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

is  imported  and  enforced  by  those  who  never  knew 
the  love  of  any  country  and  who  strangely  hate  ours. 
He  is  a  poor  American  who  is  receptive  to  these  doc- 
trines. A  true  American  will  place  love  of  country 
above  love  of  all  things  else. 


225 


CHAPTER  XI 
MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

IT  is  well  known  that  all  these  things  which  the 
public  charges  to  the  labor  union — its  injustice  and 
coarse  epithets  applied  to  the  nonunion  working- 
man,  the  poor  quality  of  work,  the  often-repeated 
and  unreasonable  strikes,  the  damage  to  business 
and  to  trade  in  the  community,  and  the  destruction 
of  property — are  all  laid  at  the  door  of  capital,  as 
though  capital  were  a  tyrant  without  mercy  to  the 
poor  man  forced  to  earn  his  living  in  the  tyrant's 
employment.  The  anarchist  workingman  is  drilled 
in  the  school  of  hate.  He  is  taught  that  the 
capitalist  has  stolen  his  property  from  the  working- 
man,  that  his  factory  belongs  to  the  workingmen 
who  built  it,  and  should  be  owned  and  run  by  them; 
that  the  profits  of  the  business  should  be  divided 
among  those  who  manufacture  the  goods,  and  that 
they  are  only  asserting  a  just  claim  for  what  they 
get,  and  that  much  more  belongs  to  them.  It 
always  is  a  hopeless  task  to  argue  with  those  who 
reason  upon  the  surface  of  things  and  whose  vision 
is  bounded  by  their  own  selfish  aims  and  desires. 
They  cannot  see  that  their  conceptions  of  human 

229 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

life  would  have  kept  mankind  cave  dwellers.  They, 
in  fact,  talk  as  though  that  would  be  a  better  condi- 
tion if  they  cannot  control  the  present  order  of 
things. 

Intelligent  and  thoughtful  men  know  that  there 
is  very  little  difference  between  the  labor  capitalist 
and  the  labor  workingman.  They  both  are  labor- 
ers. The  labor  professional  man  and  the  hand 
workingman  are  both  workingmen. 

In  a  construction  the  laborer  puts  in  his  labor,  but 
it  cannot  be  called  capital.     He  takes  out  daily  or 
weekly  or  monthly  an  equivalent  of  it,  and  carries  it 
away.     He  leaves  nothing  to  work  on  the  next  day. 
It  must  be  new  work  the  next  day,  left  for  him  by 
some  one  who  did  not  carry  away  all  that  belon^ 
to  him.     If  he  took  a  profit,  he  could  not  carry  it  all 
away  and  use  it  upon  himself.     He  had  to  deny  h 
self.     It  was  necessary  for  him  to  bring  back  most 
of  the  profits  and  build  another  factory,  that  we 
ingmen  might  be  employed,  or  buy  new  stock,  m 
steel,  more  leather,  or  other  material  for  these  men 
to  work  up  into  products.     What  he  brings  back  and 
puts  into  the  business  is  capital.     It  may  have  been 
money  which  he  saved  while  other  men  spent  tru 
in  careless  or  intemperate  living.     Possibly  it  was 
inherited    from    industrious    and    frugal    pare 
whose  lands  cleared  by  their  own  hands  had  gre 
increased  in  value,  or  it  came  from  one  or.  more  TV 
that  have  furnished  opportunities  for  the  ac- 
tion of  wealth  in  all  lands.     It  was  saved  and  put 

230 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

into  more  accumulation  and  that  is  capital.  I  ven- 
ture that  there  is  as  much  self-denial  and  personal 
sacrifice  in  the  accumulations  of  capital  as  can  be 
found  in  any  of  the  activities  of  men,  those  accumu- 
lations which  are  put  at  the  service  of  the  world, 
which  are  turned  over  for  other  men  to  use. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  capitalists  of  our  times 
that  they  do  not  take  their  profits  and  hide  them 
away  in  vaults  or  deposit  them  in  banks.  During 
the  years  of  their  vigor  they  employ  them  in  ways 
which  furnish  the  workingman  opportunity  to  earn 
his  living.  In  what  other  ways  could  it  be  done  if  it 
were  not  done  by  the  capitalist?  Certainly,  it  could 
lot  be  done  by  any  soviet  plan  of  the  workingmen 
rho  carry  away  what  they  get  and  use  it  in  the  day's 
iccessities  or  in  small  savings.  Where  the  exped- 
ient has  been  made,  it  has  failed  and  been  aban- 
loned.  Keep  in  mind  the  fact  that  capital  is  what 
the  hated  capitalist  leaves  in  the  factory  and  stock, 
that  the  laborer  may  go  to  work  again  to-morrow. 
He  is  not  the  man  to  be  hated  by  the  workingmen. 
He  should  be  esteemed  and  prized  as  a  philan- 
thropist. The  man  who  is  a  burden  upon  the  body 
politic  and  in  the  way  of  the  workingman  is  the  man 
who  is  loafing  on  the  workingman's  savings.  He  is 
the  walking  delegate.  He  is  a  leech  on  the  work- 
ingmen's  toils.  And  equally  an  enemy  is  any 
one  who  thrusts  himself  into  the  counsels  of  the 
unions  and  by  self-assertion,  through  fluency  of 
speech  and  assumption  of  superior  wisdom,  through 

231 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

uncontroverted,  nonsensical  theories  on  labor  and 
capital,  reaches  the  position  of  a  leader. 

For  hundreds  of  years  the  world  has  been  ascend- 
ing the  summits  where  trade  and  manufacture  are 
in  a  safe  economic  system,  where  the  workingman 
can  safely  offer  his  labor  with  a  sure  reward  of  his 
toils.  You  see  it  in  the  capitalist's  corporation. 
For  a  time  it  was  in  a  questionable  relation  to  the 
public,  for  we  had  watered  the  stock,  and  it  was 
bartered  about  in  the  markets  which  came  to  be 
known  as  the  stock  market.  But  at  last  it  found  its 
level,  and  the  pirates  upon  it  found  their  level  behind 
prison  bars.  To-day  it  safeguards  the  working- 
man  as  does  nothing  else  in  the  protection  of  his 
wages  and  in  a  secure  form  for  his  savings,  if 
he  counsels  with  conservative  employers  and  bank 
managers. 

Capital  is  not  a  man  to  run  away  and  leave  unpaid 
debts,  or  to  fail  with  preferred  creditors  and  a  bank- 
ruptcy of  fifty  per  cent  without  securities.  The 
corporation  has  a  habitation  and  must  answer  to  the 
law  for  what  it  is  and  what  it  has.  With  all  its 
old-time  faults  and  present  mistakes,  it  stands  under 
our  great  financial  institutions  and  manufacturing 
plants.  It  accounts  for  our  railroads,  every  one  of 
them  throughout  the  whole  country.  Far  from  be- 
ing the  covered  bridge  to  the  rich  man's  stealings,  it 
is  another  form  of  savings  bank  for  widows  and 
orphans  and  for  the  workingman's  weekly  earnings. 
The  corporation  is  not  the  exclusive  property  of  the 

232 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

rich,  but  in  its  lists  are  hundreds  of  small  holders 
who  receive  four  times  a  year,  in  most  cases,  but 
always  with  precise  regularity,  their  dividends.  In 
the  great  railroads  and  steel  companies  and  auto- 
mobile concerns  and  steamship  lines  the  workingman 
is  often  an  owner  and  is  a  capitalist,  for  he  is  leaving 
something  of  his  earnings  to  go  on  and  do  the 
world's  business.  If  he  hates  capital,  he  hates  his 
own  savings  whether  they  be  in  a  bank  or  invested 
in  a  few  stocks  of  a  corporation. 

Mr.  A.  H.  Smith,  president  of  the  New  York 
Central  Lines,  writes  me  in  reply  to  an  inquiry:  "I 
beg  to  advise  that  our  stock  records  show  that  the 
tockholders  of  the   New  York  Central   Railroad 
'ompany  numbered  29,325  on  September  22,  1919, 
>f  which  18,176,  about  62  per  cent,  were  registered 
>wners  of  less  than   100  shares   each."     That  is, 
msiderably  over  one  half  of  the  owners  of  one  of 
ie  greatest  railroads  in  the  world  are  presumably 
>eople  of  moderate  circumstances,  certainly  of  small 
id  not  market-controlling  shares. 
Two  days  later  I  received  the  following  from  Mr. 
>amuel  Rea,  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
Company:  "Replying  to  your  letter  of  the  I9th  in- 
:ant:  On  August  31,  1919,  there  was  outstanding  a 
ill  amount  of  full-paid  capital  stock  of  $499,265,- 
roo,  and  there  were   112,917   stockholders  in  the 
'ennsylvania    Railroad    Company,    their    average 
loldings  being  88.4  shares   (par  value  $50  each). 
Of  this  number  only  992  were  corporations,  so  that 

233 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

our  stock,  to  a  very  large  extent,  is  held  by  in- 
dividuals. Of  the  total  number  of  stockholders 
55,201,  or  48.89  per  cent,  are  women,  and  their 
average  holdings  are  54  shares.  Altogether,  women 
own  30.07  per  cent  of  our  total  stock  outstanding. 
The  State  of  Pennsylvania  leads  in  the  number  of 
our  stockholders  with  51,940.  New  York  is  next 
with  19,950.  New  England  has  16,342.  Foreign 
1,728,  and  scattering  23,317." 

A  letter  of  inquiry  addressed  to  Judge  Gary,  head 
of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  brought  the 
following  from  Mr.  Thomas  Murray,  assistant  sec- 
retary: "Referring  to  your  favor  of  the  I9th  instant 
to  Judge  Gary:  At  the  present  time,  we  have 
152,584  stockholders,  which,  divided  into  our  total 
number  of  shares,  would  represent  an  average  of 
fifty-seven  shares  for  each  stockholder.  Of  the 
I52>5^4  stockholders,  45,963  are  women,  and 
45,000  are  employees  who  hold  stock.  There  were 
59,864  employees  who  subscribed  in  January,  1919, 
to  the  1919  Stock  Subscription  Plan.  These  were 
old  as  well  as  new  subscribers.  When  their  accounts 
are  paid  up,  it  is  estimated  that  it  will  largely  in- 
crease the  number  of  our  employees  who  are  stock- 
holders. We  regret  to  say  that  we  have  no  later 
figures  than  those  made  up  the  latter  part  of  the 
year  1911  in  regard  to  the  actual  number  of  shares 
held  by  the  small  investor.  You  will  note  that  our 
present  stockholders  number  152,584.  In  1911, 
the  number  of  stockholders  amounted  to  102,343. 

234 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

1  share 10,864 

2  shares 7>i4° 

3  shares  4*692 

4  shares 2,902 

5  shares 7*855 

6  to        10  shares    20,305 

ii  to  25   shares  18,236 

26  to  50  shares 12,434 

51   to  100  shares  8,834 

101  to  500  shares  -6,635 

501  to  1000  shares  896 

Over  1000  shares  I»55° 

102,343 
"THOMAS  MURRAY, 

"Assistant  Secretary." 

I  had  chosen  four  of  the  great  corporations,  that 
I  might  learn  the  facts  concerning  the  holders  of 
their  stocks.  The  fourth  one  was  the  Crucible 
Steel  Company,  of  which  my  neighbor,  Mr.  H.  S. 
Wilkinson,  is  the  president.  Mr.  Wilkinson  gives 
me  the  same  report  that  I  received  from  the  other 
heads  of  the  great  corporations.  The  majority  of 
the  stockholders  are  people  of  moderate  means, 
widely  distributed.  It  is  the  policy  of  the  Crucible 
Steel  Company  to  make  it  possible  for  a  large  constit- 
uency to  hold  the  stock  of  that  great  corporation, 
which  is  managed  in  the  interest  of  all  the  stock- 
holders. 

These  great  concerns  are  not  managed  for  specu- 
lative purposes.  Their  managers  have  their  for- 

235 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

tunes  invested  in  them.  The  American  capital  be- 
hind the  workingman  is  exceedingly  interesting,  and 
he  who  talks  about  capitalists  oppressing  the  poor 
gives  a  glaring  exhibition  of  his  ignorance.  He 
who  is  deceived  is  without  excuse.  The  capitalists 
are  not  what  were  once  known  as  "bloated  bond 
holders."  They  are  men  and  women  of  all  thrifty 
classes.  Capital  is  not  something  with  which  men 
are  gambling  at  the  expense  of  the  poor  man,  but  it 
is  what  is  left  over  to  go  into  business  which  helps 
directly  the  workingman.  It  keeps  the  railroads 
running,  the  factory  wheels  turning,  and  the  great 
steel  forges  glowing  with  industry.  If  it  were  all 
owned  by  the  rich,  it  is  not  hoarded.  If  you  destroy 
it,  or  distribute  it  to  the  communists,  you  stop  every 
wheel  in  the  country.  This  would  be  the  most 
effective  way  to  stop  the  wheels  so  they  would  never 
start  again,  as  was  threatened  by  an  agitator  a  few 
weeks  ago. 

One  of  the  happiest  phases  of  American  industrial 
life  is  that  our  working  people  can  and  do  invest  in 
the  same  enterprises  as  those  from  which  the  rich 
receive  their  dividends.  The  same  mail  carries 
them  out  the  same  day  to  the  same  post  offices.  And 
the  small  holdings  of  to-day  become  the  larger  ones 
to-morrow. 

The  wealth  of  our  country  is  not  held  by  primo- 
geniture entailed  through  long  generations  in  vast 
landed  estates  in  which  the  majority  of  the  rural 
population  lives  by  leaseholds,  and  it  does  not  cor- 

236 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

respond  to  the  old  definitions  of  values  which  cannot 
be  exchanged  except  for  labor.     We*  are  in  a  time 
when  labor  has  an  exchange  value  and  its  returns 
exceed  the  simple  hunger  and  clothes  and  shelter 
uses.     The  laboring  man  who  is  frugal  and  temper- 
ate as  a  rule  has  a  margin,  if  small,  which  can  be 
invested  and  pays  him  a  return  value,  and  to  that 
extent  is  wealth.     And  this  is  not  to  be  despised, 
because  in  this  country  some  of  the  greatest  for- 
tunes and  some  of  the  largest  capitalists  have  sprung 
from  homes  and  conditions  of  poverty.    The  Rocke- 
fellers and  Carnegies  were  poor  boys.     Mr.  Car- 
negie when  a  boy,  as  has  been  previously  stated, 
worked  for  a  dollar  a  week  and  vainly  tried  to  die  a 
>oor  man.    Mr.  John  Dustin  Archbold  was  the  son 
•f  a  Methodist  minister  and  recalled  the  days  when, 
is  they  moved  from  one  circuit  to  another,  he,  a 
Barefooted  boy,  led  the  cow  behind  the  wagon  which 
:arried  the  few  pieces  of  their  rude  furniture. 

One  evening,  walking  through  I25th  Street,  New 
'ork,  with  my  intimate  friend  John  S.  Huyler,  the 
:andy  manufacturer,  I  found  myself  suddenly  pulled 
iround  facing  a  plate  glass  window  of  a  store  and 
;aw  before  me  a  man  pulling  candy  from  a  hook, 
[r.  Huyler  said  to  me:  "There  I   am.     That  is 
'here  Jack  Huyler  began  to  make  his  fortune." 
"Tell  me  what  you  mean,"  I  said. 
"I  mean,"  he  answered,  "that  that  is  the  way  I 
>egan  my  factories,  and  out  of  that  have  come  my 
stores  scattered  over  the  country." 

237 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

Our  land  is  full  of  such  instances.  Nearly  all  of 
the  capitalists  who  are  cursed  as  plutocrats  by  labor 
agitators  have  come  to  their  wealth  in  that  way,  and 
the  paths  are  still  open  if  they  are  not  blocked  and 
destroyed  by  blind  fools  who  are  undertaking  to 
lead  the  blind.  Left  to  themselves  and  saving  from 
their  earnings  and  using  their  wits,  they  cannot  fail. 
Paying  away  their  money  in  dues,  losing  their  time 
in  strikes,  wasting  the  margins  of  shortened  days, 
they  will  remain  poor  and  discontented,  the  victims 
of  their  enemies,  and  the  enemies  of  their  country. 
There  never  was  a  scheme  that  promised  so  much 
to  the  workingman  as  that  one  which  enables  him  to 
invest  his  earnings  in  the  business  where  he  works 
and  where  in  hundreds  of  cases  he  is  soon  the  fore- 
man, the  general  superintendent,  and  in  due  time  is 
found  in  the  directors'  board  room. 

The  wise  plan  is  to  join  himself  to  the  strong  man, 
to  become  in  any  small  way  a  partner  of  the  larger 
capitalist,  to  use  the  lifting  power  of  his  strength, 
and  to  see  through  the  eyes  of  his  business  sagacity. 
It  ought  to  require  only  ordinary  intelligence  for  our 
workingmen  to  see  that  that  is  the  side  on  which 
their  bread  is  buttered.  It  has  worked  immense 
advantages  to  the  laborers  of  the  past.  What  has 
the  gutter  orator  done  for  them?  What  has  the  red 
socialist  done?  With  shorter  hours  and  higher  pay 
will  more  of  these  men  become  capitalists  such  as  I 
have  described,  or  will  they  shift  their  entire  horizon 
to  the  pot  of  gold  at  the  end  of  the  rainbow?  Have 

238 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

they  abandoned  the  old  plan,  which  is  vindicated  in 
thousands  of  instances  of  success,  to  a  plan  of  some- 
thing for  nothing?  Is  the  plan  of  overthrowing  the 
capitalist  more  fascinating?  That  is  to  overthrow 
their  fellow  workingman,  for  the  great  majority  of 
capitalists  are  men  who  were  workingmen  who  car- 
ried their  dinner  pail  to  the  shop  and  their  pay 
envelope  home  Saturday  night.  This  is  capable  of 
the  plainest  demonstration.  Set  down  and  reckon 
up  what  crowds  your  memory,  and  put  in  what  you 
see  around  you.  If  you  find  exceptions,  then  what 
of  that  man's  father?  Where  did  his  inherited 
millions  come  from  if  not  from  a  workingman  who 
invested  his  savings,  not  in  speculative  wild  oats,  but 
in  properties?  And  what  is  that  heir  to  millions 
doing?  He  is  using  them  and  they  make  employ- 
ment for  the  man  whose  present  capital  is  his  hands 
and  whose  few  investments  are  his  savings. 

There  seems  to  be  a  thought  abroad — and  it  is 
urged  by  the  blind  leaders  of  the  blind — that  the 
capitalist  is  a  man  who  only  pours  investments  into 
the  hopper  and  the  workingman  turns  out  the  grist. 
Life  to  the  capitalist  is  a  luxury!  I  have  lived 
among  these  men  long  enough  and  have  known 
enough  of  them  to  know  that  they  are  the  hardest- 
working  men  of  the  community.  They  are  on  their 
job  all  the  time.  The  laborer  quits  at  five  o'clock 
and  leaves  his  responsibility  beside  the  lathe  until 
eight  o'clock  the  next  morning.  When  the  em- 
ployer goes  home  often  it  is  to  plan  the  to-morrows, 

239 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  to  figure  himself  through  changing  markets,  and 
keep  abreast  of  unexpected  and  sudden  new  demands 
of  trade  and  fancies,  or  to  meet  a  threatened  strike 
with  the  uncertain  profits  of  a  business  already 
crippled  by  shortened  hours  and  increased  pay 
forced  a  dozen  times  by  the  same  old  threat.  It  is 
only  the  passion  for  doing  things  that  keeps  thou- 
sands of  these  men  at  the  task  of  urging  on  their 
business  at  a  killing  pace.  It  is  time  to  change  the 
wail  of  pity  for  the  workingman  and  give  a  little 
sympathy  to  the  man  who  opens  the  factory  door 
for  him  after  a  restless  night  of  anxious  plans  and 
schemes  for  increasing  the  business.  It  is  about 
time  that  the  world  changed  ends  of  this  proposition 
for  a  while. 

Let  us  inquire  what  would  be  the  condition  if 
to-morrow  the  capitalists  were  to  withdraw  all  the 
enterprises  that  furnish  employment.  Who  would 
be  the  loser?  He  would  have  his  hands.  The 
workingman  would  not  have  his  business.  Let  him 
try  to  take  it.  Do  you  think  you  could  reverse  a 
lifetime  of  the  order  of  things?  The  capitalist 
would  have  the  better  of  it.  Labor  would  have 
some  smokeless  factory  chimneys,  and  that  would 
be  all,  and  he  could  not  carry  on  in  them.  When 
men  curse  the  capitalist  they  talk  about  some  dis- 
tant imaginary  thing.  But  he  is  here.  He  started 
the  factory  and  keeps  it  going. 

There  is  no  conspiracy  against  labor  except  by 
labor  itself.  The  economy  of  this  world  recognizes 

240 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

the  place  of  the  workingman,   and  capital  is  con- 
stantly studying  how  it  can  secure  to  him  the  greatest 
efficiency,  intelligence,  and  contentment.     What  ad- 
vantage can  be  imagined  to  accrue  to  the  capitalist 
from    a    discontented,    half-fed,    and    half-clothed 
workingman,  tortured  by  a  sick  wife,  crying  children, 
without    proper    food    or    medicine?     These    are 
primary  questions,  too  elementary  and  simple  for 
him   to    neglect.     To   promote    this   workingman's 
conditions  is  an  important  part  of  the  capitalist's  in- 
vestments.    When  has   the   world   ever   seen   such 
great  sums  of  money  put  into  betterments  for  the 
workingmen,    like    baths,    reading    rooms,    music, 
movies,  and  lectures?    When  were  the  books  opened 
dder  and  the  profits  ever  shown  as  they  are  now? 
rhat  does  the  workingman  have  to  say  about  the 
listribution  of  the  profits  of  a  business  besides  his 
)wn  wage?     Is  nothing  to  come  to  those  who  have 
>ut  the  capital  into  it?     We  have  seen  that  over  one 
lundred  thousand  people  of  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
*oad  have  claims  on  the  receipts  of  that  road,  who 
ire  its  stockholders,  and  there  are  over  one  hundred 
ind  fifty  thousand  persons  of  the  United  States  Steel 
Company  who  must  be  paid  quarterly  their  invest- 
ient  dues,  and  nearly  a  third  of  them  are  women. 
These  are  rather  awakening  facts  in  the  face  of 
ic  constantly  repeated  charge  of  agitators  that  cap- 
ralists  are  grinding  the  poor  workingmen  between 
ie  upper  and  lower  millstones ! 
The  tyranny  of  capital  is  the  stock  in  trade  of  the 
241 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

union  demagogue  and  agitator,  who  finds  ready 
listeners  in  the  foreign  element  which  so  largely  is  in 
control  of  the  organization.  The  injustice  and  fool- 
ishness of  the  charge  is  apparent  at  once  to  those 
who  know  the  wide  distribution  of  capital  and  how 
large  a  per  cent  of  it  is  in  the  hands  of  people  of 
moderate  circumstances.  Thousands  buy  broken 
shares  of  stocks  for  permanent  holdings.  When 
the  Standard  Oil  Company  was  unwisely  dissolved 
a  few  years  ago  and  the  expense  of  its  management 
was  increased,  forcing  the  people  to  pay  higher 
prices  for  its  products,  it  was  found  that  its  stocks 
were  held  not  only  by  millionaires  but  by  poor  men, 
by  women,  and  by  preachers  of  the  different  churches. 
Capital  is  money  from  all  these  sources  invested 
in  labor-making  business,  and  is  peculiarly  the  hope, 
and  the  main  hope,  of  the  workingman's  wage.  The 
more  capital  there  is,  the  more  work  there  is.  Even 
the  rich  man's  luxuries  must  pay  their  toll  to  the 
workingman.  The  poor  man's  savings  are  con- 
tributing to  employment.  We  have  a  wonderful 
plan  in  our  provision  and  scheme  of  capital.  Would 
it  be  better  if  hidden  in  a  hole  in  the  ground  or  a 
hollow  tree  or  in  a  stocking?  If  it  is  put  into  a 
savings  bank,  it  is  loaned  out  to  some  industry. 
Capital  is  money  moving  and  transmuted  into  lathes 
and  drill  presses  and  looms  and  mills  and  factories 
wherever  you  see  men  and  women  busy  earning 
bread  for  the  home.  Will  any  one  tell  how  this 
could  be  done  without  money  which  has  been  saved 

242 


MY  NEIGHBOR  AND  THE  CAPITALIST 

by  both  the  rich  and  the  poor?  The  miserly  hoard- 
ing of  money  is  the  evil  against  which  we  are 
warned.  Then  it  is  not  capital.  It  is  capital  only 
when  it  becomes  an  exchange  for  labor  and  labor 
>es  into  the  progress  of  the  world.  The  dema- 
>gues'  hatred  of  wealth  is  idiocy  which  should  not 
leceive  anyone. 

The  chief  federation  leaders  control  vast  sums  of 
loney,   and  lack  for  nothing.     What  better  is   it 
whether  a  man  controls  capital  in  a  corporation  or  in 
the  management  of  the  activities  and  destinies  of 
corporate   bodies   of   workingmen?     Is    capital    an 
ibuse  of  human  freedom  when  providing  men  with 
iployment,  and  a  blessing  and  a  defense  of  free- 
lorn  when  used  to  antagonize  labor  and  to  create 
•iotous  strikes  and  to  destroy  property?   Is  the  cap- 
italist to  be  condemned  and  cursed  as  a  plutocrat  for 
cutting  his  money  into  factories  and  the  credit  to  run 
icm,  by  the  employment  of  thousands  of  men  who 
lave  no  other  way  of  earning  their  living?     But  the 
ipitalist  is  a  benefactor  when  he  creates  a  great  fund 
for  no  purpose  of  business,  but  holds  it  as  a  menace 
to  business  and  arbitrarily  to  dictate  how  business 
shall  be  conducted.     The  one  capitalist  is  creating 
business,  the  other  is  obstructing  business.     The  one 
is  widening  the  markets  of  the  world,  the  other  is 
threatening   them,    if   he    does    not   destroy    them. 
There  has  been  money  enough  shut  up  in  a  genera- 
tion, by  the  blind  leaders  of  labor,  and  used  waste- 
fully  and  destructively  in  our  mighty  fields  of  in- 

243 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

dustry,  to  capitalize  Europe  in,  these  days  of  its  dire 
distress.  If  there  is  any  ground  for  the  criticism  of 
capital,  it  is  of  the  capital  which  has  been  used  only 
to  wage  war  against  the  men  who  have  dared  to  risk 
their  fortunes  in  investments  which  promote  the 
thrift  and  happiness  of  thousands  of  families  who 
are  the  units  of  our  national  life  and  civilization. 
The  obnoxious  and  intolerable  capitalist  is  that  mil- 
lionaire who  never  created  a  business,  but  has 
wriggled  himself  into  the  management  of  the  dues 
and  fees  of  the  unions  of  hard-working  men  whom 
he  strangely  deceives.  He  is  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses a  millionaire,  the  plutocrat  capitalist  of  dema- 
gogy and  destruction. 

It  is  no  credit  to  the  intelligence  of  the  working- 
man  that  he  should  be  so  dull  and  slow  in  discovering 
his  great  and  indispensable  friend,  the  business  cap- 
italist who  provides  him  employment,  and  that  he 
should  assess  himself  year  after  year  to  pay  men  to 
discredit  capital  in  the  realm  of  labor,  men  who 
notoriously  were  never  in  anything  producers,  but 
have  been  destroyers  of  both  labor  and  capital. 


244 


CHAPTER  XII 
MY    NEIGHBOR'S    WALKING    DELEGATE 

A  GREAT  business  requires  a  promoter.  It  is  a 
feature  of  the  modern  way  of  extending  legitimate 
enterprises,  and  as  every  good  thing  has  its  counter- 
feit, some  bad  things  have  promoters.  That  labor 
should  have  promoters  is  right  and  without  suspicion 
or  just  criticism.  It  was  natural  and  to  be  expected 
that  so  large  a  part  of  the  activities  of  men  would 
require  an  organized  force,  and  that  men  should  be 
chosen  to  give  their  time  to  the  promotion  of  its 
interests.  No  one  could  complain  of  that.  But  it 
carried  a  great  responsibility.  The  men  chosen 
must  be  men  with  remarkably  sound  judgment  and 
with  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  and  the  harmlessness 
of  the  dove.  They  could  promote  or  they  could 
destroy.  They  could  make  the  workingmen  a  power 
for  good,  serving  their  country,  or  they  could  make 
them  a  menace.  They  would  have  to  deal  with  many 
men,  some  of  them  ignorant,  impulsive,  passionate, 
and  suspicious — among  them  some  recently  from  for- 
eign countries  where  they  had  been  trained  to  feel- 
ings of  antagonism  to  their  country.  The  whole  work 
to  be  highly  successful  must  be  constructive.  It  must 
amalgamate  within  the  organization,  and  affiliate 
and  coordinate  outside  of  it.  The  labor  union  must 

245 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

work  not  only  to  promote  itself  but  to  make  itself  a 
promoter  of  all  that  is  best  for  the  community.  It 
can  be  seen,  therefore,  that  men  in  the  unions,  who 
are  its  representatives  outside,  must  be  men  of  a 
high  character.  The  fact  that  a  man  represented  a 
union  in  any  capacity  should  be  the  best  recommen- 
dation he  can  have.  That  that  has  not  been  true  is 
too  patent  and  obvious  to  be  denied  by  even  its  best 
friends,  and  the  most  serious  mistake  has  been  with 
the  walking  delegate.  He  may  be  a  good  carpenter 
or  mason,  but  too  often  he  has  been  far  from  an  im- 
pressive man.  It  is  not  necessary  for  him  to  be  a 
Chesterfield  or  Beau  Brummel,  although  gentle- 
manly instincts  and  cordial  address  would  not  harm 
him.  The  menacing  manner  upon  the  part  of  the 
walking  delegate  has  been  accountable  for  many  a 
strike.  The  man  should  be  capable  of  interpreting 
the  man  he  addresses,  and  diplomat  enough  to 
secure  an  amicable  understanding  of  questions  in- 
volving interests  intensely  personal  and  often 
equally  exciting.  But  usually  the  walking  dele- 
gate appears  to  be  chosen  because  he  is  a 
vote-getter  within  the  union,  by  qualities  which  in 
no  way  fit  him  for  his  delicate  work.  He  is 
a  mixer  among  his  fellows,  but  not  with  men  to 
whom  he  must  bring  his  organization  on  strictly  its 
merits.  Espionage  is  always  oppression,  and  if  it 
comes  to  the  front,  the  man  who  practices  it  goes 
to  the  rear.  It  blunders.  Its  conceits  are  blinding 
to  the  spy.  It  has  a  meddling  appearance  which  is 

246 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING   DELEGATE 

resented.  This  is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  sources 
of  unpopularity.  The  plan  of  a  business  is  sensitive 
to  inquisitiveness.  Any  obtruded  management  from 
outside  is  resented.  The  intermediary  between 
labor  unions  and  a  business  of  any  kind  should  be  of 
distinct  endowment.  The  union  has  no  more  critical 
office  within  itself  than  the  wise  choice  of  a  walking 
delegate. 

The  walking  delegate  is  under  a  great  pressure  to 
make  good.  He  feels  that  he  has  to  make  a  good 
report,  one  of  real,  constant  progress,  to  justify  his 
employment.  That  is  one  of  the  embarrassments 
to  the  business  agent  in  anything,  whether  it  is  a 
special  prosecuting  attorney  or  a  walking  delegate. 
A  few  years  ago  a  large  number  of  prosecuting  at- 
torneys were  employed  by  the  government  in  its 
attack  upon  big  business.  These  men  seemed  to 
feel  that  they  must  prosecute  everything  in  sight  and 
scores  of  men  were  prosecuted  who  could  not  be 
convicted.  The  result  was  the  failure  of  the  good 
in  the  plan  to  eradicate  the  evil  and  it  entrenched 
men  in  practices  that  merited  severe  penalties.  This 
overdoing  of  the  office  brought  it  into  contempt 
among  sober-thinking  people,  and  some  years  have 
passed  with  small  attention  to  evils  which  it  was 
sought  to  correct  by  special  attorneys.  The 
walking  delegate  is  an  evil  of  the  labor  union 
which  has  been  not  only  carelessly  done  but  over- 
done. It  has  created  too  many  who  must  find  some- 
thing to  account  for  themselves,  and  who  ought 

247 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

to  be  employed  in  the  world's  work.  The  things 
they  try  to  do  would  work  themselves  out  far  better 
if  left  to  the  laws  of  business  and  labor  which  are 
always  operative  to  bring  about  contracts  and  the 
workingman's  employment.  Contractors  do  not 
require  walking  delegates,  nor  the  typewriter  works, 
nor  the  automobile  manufacturers.  Competition  is 
not  overcome  by  attacking  the  other  man's  business, 
interfering  with  his  contracts,  breaking  the  machines 
in  shops  of  typewriters  and  automobiles.  In  so  far 
as  these  are  promoted  by  agents,  they  go  out  upon 
the  principle  that  the  world  is  large  and  there  is 
room  for  every  man  who  is  doing  things  which  other 
men  want  done.  There  must  be  an  inherent  weak- 
ness and  fatal  defect  in  a  business  which  must 
destroy  or  embarrass  another  business  to  live.  All 
of  the  worst  things  possible  seem  to  be  embodied  in 
the  walking  delegate.  He  appears  on  a  job  to  see 
who  is  there  who  ought  not  to  be  there,  or  who  is  not 
there  who  ought  to  be  there — according  to  his  judg- 
ment. And  after  a  controversy  with  the  representa- 
tives of  the  firm,  interlarded  with  threats  and 
profanity,  he  makes  his  way  back  to  the  union  to 
advise  that  the  business  be  declared  unfair.  A 
sound,  self-contained  man  ought  to  have  seen  that 
it  was  not  unfair,  and  if  it  were,  there  was  a  better 
way  to  secure  a  fair  adjustment.  To  the  layman 
who  is  a  full-blooded  American  and  has  in  his  veins 
the  freedom  which  came  from  the  old  musket  which 
he  found  in  his  father's  attic,  the  question  will  come 

248 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

forcibly  as  to  what  right  any  unchartered  and  self- 
constituted  body  of  men  has  to  send  out  a  repre- 
sentative to  call  their  fellow  citizens  in  question  for 
the  pursuit  of  their  business,  so  long  as  it  meets  the 
requirements  of  the  laws.  These  delegates  should 
be  in  the  Legislature,  making  sound  laws,  and  not  on 
the  building  or  in  the  factory,  quarreling  with  the 
proprietor.  Upon  what  authority,  or  by  what  right 
did  this  body  of  men  send  out  this  meddler  to  inter- 
fere with  the  business  of  the  world  and  to  do  it  over 
and  over  and  constantly  menace  business  until  it  is 
impossible  to  conduct  business  or  to  employ  work- 
ingmen  upon  any  certain  basis?  The  plan  works 
against  not  only  the  business  but  is  a  most  harmful 
agency  to  the  man  who  depends  upon  some  fixed 
and  stable  price  for  his  own  labors.  Untold  mil- 
lions are  lost  foolishly  by  the  folly  of  walking 
delegates. 

That  it  may  not  be  truthfully  said  that  these  stric- 
tures upon  the  walking  delegate  are  by  men  who 
have  no  practical  knowledge  of  the  institution  or  the 
work  of  the  men,  I  will  give  some  personal  observa- 
tions, for  the  only  purpose  of  these  chapters  is  to 
serve  the  country  by  a  better  condition  in  the  work- 
ing world.  A  young  janitor  at  the  institution  where 
I  am  located  developed  an  unusual  ability  in  the 
practical  mechanic  arts.  He  attempted  to  apply  it 
in  some  plumbing  work  about  the  laboratories  and 
was  threatened  with  arrest  for  working  without 
license.  He  applied  for  a  plumber's  license.  He 

249 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

passed  the  examinations,  but,  to  use  the  trade  term, 
was  turned  down.  He  passed  again  with  the  same 
result.  A  third  effort  met  with  no  better  result, 
and  a  fourth  examination  was  taken.  I  then  insisted 
that  the  questions  and  answers  of  the  city  board, 
made  up  of  union  men  or  their  sympathizers,  should 
be  published  in  the  city  papers.  I  notified  the  con- 
trolling political  influence  of  the  city  of  my  purpose 
and  was  requested  to  wait  a  few  days.  Within  the 
few  days  the  license  came  and  the  character  of  the 
work  done  under  it  has  never  been  questioned.  But 
when  our  licensed  plumber  attempted  to  buy  goods, 
he  was  not  permitted  to  buy  at  wholesale  houses,  but 
was  restricted  to  the  retail  trade.  Other  plumbers 
had  the  discount  which  he  was  refused.  The  whole- 
salers apologized,  but  they  were  told,  they  said,  that 
if  they  sold  to  our  plumber,  their  trade  would  suffer. 
The  walking  delegate  was  on  his  job.  The  case 
was  reported  to  me  by  the  trade.  I  told  our 
plumber  that  I  wanted  him  to  go  to  Boston  and 
buy,  at  best  wholesale  rates  to  wholesalers,  a  carload 
of  plumber's  materials.  If  he  could  not  get  it  there, 
to  go  to  New  York;  and  if  he  could  not  buy  there,  go 
to  Philadelphia;  and  if  he  found  himself  blocked 
there,  to  come  home  and  I  would  send  him  to  Liver- 
pool and  London.  He  bought  in  Boston.  The 
material  was  hauled  through  the  streets  to  the 
University.  Instantly  the  telephones  began  to  ring, 
and  we  were  told  with  regrets  that  that  need  never 
happen  again.  We  should  have  all  the  goods  we 

250 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

wanted  at  the  best  price  given  to  anyone  in  the  town. 
We  have  had  no  trouble  of  that  kind  since. 

We  have  had  buildings  posted  as  unfair,  and  have 
been  notified  that  the  placard  would  be  taken  down 
for  a  certain  penalty.  The  amount  dwindled  to  the 
cost  of  printing  the  circulars.  Not  a  nickel  was 
paid.  Our  latest  experience,  one  of  many,  was  a  few 
weeks  ago.  We  always  have  employed  union  men, 
and  when  desired  and  we  could  do  so  without  extra 
expense,  have  put  them  on  separate  buildings.  But 
our  superintendent  found  it  imperative  to  dismiss  a 
union  painter  who  had  worked  for  us  for  months. 
At  once  the  walking  delegate  appeared  and  told  our 
superintendent  that  he  must  discharge  all  nonunion 
men  or  work  would  be  stopped  everywhere  in  the 
institution.  Union  men  would  not  be  permitted  to 
work  in  separate  buildings  if  nonunion  men  worked 
anywhere  about  the  premises.  A  large  hospital  and 
a  dispensary  are  owned  by  the  university.  The 
hospital  sheltered  hundreds  of  young  soldiers  in  the 
terrible  influenza  epidemic  then  raging,  with  great 
difficulty.  The  nurses'  lecture  rooms,  the  chapel, 
the  corridors  were  crowded.  Several  of  our  nurses 
gave  up  their  lives  in  the  work.  Our  superintendent 
has  been  in  a  sanitarium  for  weeks  as  a  result.  We 
received  the  gift  of  a  great  research  laboratory  de- 
manded by  our  increasing  patients.  Lives  were  to 
depend  upon  its  practical  work.  Every  union  man 
was  taken  off  it.  A  few  days'  work  of  electricians 
could  finish  it.  No  concession  to  the  sick  and  dying 

251 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

would  be  made.  Other  parts  of  the  hospital  were 
in  special  need  of  help.  There  was  but  one  condi- 
tion— force  out  our  old  and  tried  help  in  all  depart- 
ments or  no  men  of  any  trade  would  be  permitted  to 
work  anywhere  about  the  university.  The  walking 
delegate  came  into  our  buildings.  I  saw  him  stand- 
ing where  he  could  watch  men  coming  and  going. 
A  break  in  a  water  main  must  be  mended.  We  were 
notified  that  nothing  would  be  permitted  until  we 
came  to  terms.  We  are  not  anxious.  These  are 
sample  cases.  They  show  the  character  of  the  usur- 
pation, the  tyranny  of  the  organization  that  has  no 
regard  for  our  hospitals,  that  purposes  to  coerce  our 
educational  institutions,  when  at  that  very  moment 
sons  and  daughters  of  some  of  these  men  are  re- 
ceiving remittances  of  tuition  expenses  in  the  uni- 
versity and  men  themselves,  or  their  wives,  are  oc- 
cupying free  beds  in  the  hospital. 

To  what  lengths  of  degradation  will  men  go  as 
organizations,  to  what  barbarism  will  they  be 
aroused  by  excited  and  passionate  speeches  of  their 
walking  delegates  in  their  meetings  where  no  man 
is  present  to  state  the  side  of  humanity?  It  is  not  a 
contest  of  starving  men  for  a  place  to  work.  There 
is  work  enough  for  every  union  and  non-union  man 
in  that  city.  It  is  not  a  question  of  whether  they  shall 
get  wage  enough  to  buy  food  and  clothes.  There 
is  no  division  on  that  subject.  It  is  simply  and  only 
a  determination  upon  the  part  of  a  band  of  men 
that  other  men  shall  not  work.  And  the  offense  of 

252 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

these  men  is  that  they  do  not  choose  to  belong  to 
their  union  and  work  with  their  card.  They  are 
competent  and  satisfactory  to  their  employers,  but 
they  insist  upon  being  free  men,  and,  having  the 
spirit  of  '76  they  insist  the  more  where  their  free- 
dom is  put  to  the  test  and  denied  them.  They  see 
foreigners  and  foreign-born  men,  who  would  be 
fought  in  battle  to  the  death  if  they  landed  here 
armed  to  enforce  the  same  rules,  permitted  to  dic- 
tate the  terms  of  our  human  liberty  in  matters  that 
relate  to  our  common  business  interests.  We  are 
plainly  notified,  by  an  agent  sent  out,  whom  we  shall 
not  employ  and  whom  we  must  employ.  We  are 
told  when  we  can  work  and  when  we  cannot  work, 
however  degrading  the  tyranny  may  be.  The  na- 
tional government  never  assumed  such  paternalism. 
They  could  not  put  it  into  the  Constitution.  It  has 
never  gone  into  any  amendment.  We  look  for  it  in 
vain  in  our  Declaration  of  Independence,  when  we 
were  revolting  from  foreign  oppression  and  tyranny. 
It  remains  for  men  claiming  the  protection  of  our 
law  to  oppress  their  fellow  men. 

There  are  men  of  excellent  character  among  walk- 
ing delegates.  They  have  their  place  with  our  best 
citizens,  and  are  capable  of  looking  at  all  sides  of  the 
problem  of  labor.  You  do  not  find  impulsive  strikes 
where  these  men  have  a  controlling  influence.  But 
from  the  experiences  of  those  who  have  much  to 
do  with  labor  and  judging  from  correspondents  in 
our  conservative  and  most  reliable  great  daily 

253 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

papers  and  other  periodicals,  the  majority  of  walk- 
ing delegates  are  men  whom  contractors  and  manu- 
facturers do  not  wish  to  take  into  their  councils. 
An  instance  is  in  the  recent  case  of  the  president  of 
the  United  States  Steel  Corporation.  He  will  not 
consent  to  personal  interviews.  He  prefers  to  re- 
ceive written  communications.  And  that  has  been 
the  common  verdict  of  men  at  the  head  of  the  great 
businesses  of  the  country.  As  a  rule,  the  walking 
delegate  is  ignorant.  He  is  uninformed  in  every- 
thing except  where  men  of  his  order  are  working, 
their  pay,  and  whether  firms  employ  any  men  outside 
of  the  union.  The  narrowness  of  his  horizon  is 
astonishing.  How  can  he  discuss  a  contract  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  dollars,  with  all  of  its  com- 
plications, of  which  labor  is  only  a  small  part? 
What  argument  can  appeal  to  him?  It  was  a  relief 
when  he,  a  disturbing  element,  left  the  job  of  the 
contractor  to  whom  he  now  becomes  an  ignorant 
dictator,  for  he  was  more  active  with  the  tongue  in 
his  vacuum  caput  than  with  his  hammer  or  trowel. 
He  was  the  most  unsatisfactory  workingman  among 
his  fellows.  That  tongue  gave  him  a  most  fortunate 
position  in  the  union  or  associated  unions  to  which  he 
belonged. 

The  labor  unions  will  never  have  the  place  which 
they  might  have,  a  place  of  confidence,  respect  and 
power  in  the  community,  until  they  show  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  dignity  and  intelligence  that  should 
characterize  them  by  carefully  selecting  representa- 

254 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

tives  from  their  most  respected  members.  If  we 
are  to  believe  the  signed  and  circumstantial  accounts 
in  leading  papers,  the  men  now  acting  as  walking 
delegates  are  instigators  of  most  of  the  trouble  be- 
tween labor  and  manufacturing  business.  If  they 
do  not  throw  the  first  brickbat  and  fire  the  first  shot, 
it  is  often  at  their  word  that  such  violence  begins. 
And  having  begun,  it  needs  no  one  to  lead.  It  is 
unheard  of  that  the  walking  delegate  is  on  the  side 
of  the  police  restraining  violence,  protecting  lives 
and  property. 

The  labor  union  should  be  made  to  feel  that  it 
is  responsible  for  the  acts  of  its  agents,  measured  by 
loss  of  life  or  property  traced  to  their  instigator. 
A  few  lessons  like  that  of  the  Danbury  hatters  case 
would  be  most  wholesome.  It  never  should  have 
been  nullified  by  any  modifying  law.  Something  ex- 
traneous and  unimagined  by  our  fathers,  and  that 
has  received  too  little  attention  from  our  legislators, 
has  been  thrust  in  upon  us  and  claims  not  an  equal 
place  but  the  controlling  authority  over  us.  It 
threatens  votes  to  the  opposite  party  and  brickbats, 
pistols,  revolvers,  and  the  incendiary  torch  all  mixed 
into  one  bill  of  fare  to  all  who  disregard  or  oppose 
them. 

What  would  be  thought  of  an  association  of 
merchants  or  manufacturers  who  were  to  start  out 
with  the  claim  of  monopolizing  the  business  of  their 
kind  in  the  town,  and  if  anyone  not  of  the  association 
were  to  come  into  the  place  and  start  a  business,  the 

255 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

association  were  to  send  out  its  walking  delegates 
and  threaten  the  new  association  with  violence  if  he 
did  not  join  the  association  or  move  out?  We  have 
just  had  a  case  similar  in  a  thriving  city  of  New 
York  State.  An  Italian  of  another  town  was 
murdered  because  he  did  not  heed  the  threat  that 
this  would  happen  to  him  if  he  came  there  to  com- 
pete with  men  in  the  same  business.  But  why  have 
not  our  dry-goods  merchants  the  right  to  associate 
themselves  together  to  protect  their  prices  against 
all  comers  by  closing  the  privilege  to  trade  against 
them,  if  a  number  of  laborers  can  combine  to  stop 
all  work  in  a  town  when  anyone  is  hired  who  does 
not  belong  to  their  union?  What  more  would  the 
association  of  dry-goods  merchants  do  if  it  sent  out 
hired  agents  to  go  over  to  the  new  store  opened 
yesterday  and  say,  uWe  mean  to  stop  your  interfer- 
ing with  trade  here  unless  you  pay  a  thousand  dol- 
lars to  belong  to  our  association.  We  judge  that 
that  would  be  about  right  from  the  prospects  of  your 
trade,  as  an  annual  due"?  And  if  the  head  man 
kicked  that  delegate  out  into  the  gutter,  his  business 
would  be  posted  as  unfair!  And  if  that  did  not  do, 
customers  would  be  intercepted  on  their  way  to  the 
new  store;  and  if  that  did  not  accomplish  it,  a  brick- 
bat would  go  through  the  plate-glass  front  of  the 
new  store,  and  it  would  be  made  personally  danger- 
ous for  the  customers  in  that  store.  And  some 
morning  the  town's  people  would  read  at  breakfast 
that  the  new  store  had  been  struck  by  lightning! 

256 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING   DELEGATE 

Would  that  be  any  worse  than  the  Los  Angeles 
Times  case? 

Why  would  it,  and  why  should  anyone  complain  ? 
Is  not  that  what  is  being  done  by  walking  delegates 
and  their  associates  all  over  this  country?  If  the 
union  workingmen  can  do  that  and  we  consent  to  it, 
why  not  the  merchants  ?  O,  but  it  is  inconceivable ! 
Ought  not  the  other  to  be  equally  so  ?  Why  should 
workingmen  have  a  monopoly  of  this  high  privilege? 
Why  should  they  force  the  price  of  labor  up  when- 
ever the  notion  takes  them  and  the  merchant  must 
take  his  chances  of  supply  and  demand  and  compete 
with  every  newcomer  who  may  bring  into  the  town 
his  new  and  taking  notions?  Is  it  fair?  Is  it  just? 
The  merchant  pays  for  his  privilege  in  increasing 
taxes.  What  does  the  workingman  pay  for  hi's 
privilege?  In  what  does  his  right  inhere  over  his 
neighbor,  the  merchant?  Why  not  the  manufac- 
turers? Why  not  let  our  city  or  town  be  made  a 
close  corporation  against  everybody  who  cannot  be 
mulcted  for  the  privilege  he  seeks  among  us? 
American  freedom  is  barred  at  our  city  limits.  Take 
down  the  auto  speed  sign  and  put  in  its  place  that  no 
man  of  any  trade  or  labor,  calling  or  manufacture 
can  stop  here  without  the  consent  of  the  particular 
trade  or  calling  to  which  he  seeks  to  belong.  Indi- 
vidual freedom  that  came  with  our  common  liberty 
has  been  revoked  here. 

If  you  cannot  see  that  there  is  no  difference,  can 
you  tell  us  what  the  difference  is?  Upon  what  prin- 

257 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ciple  is  the  action  based  in  the  one  case  that  it  could 
not  be  upon  the  other?  Suppose  the  whole  matter 
of  the  workingman's  arbitrary  demands  were  re- 
vised, and  that  unions  were  formed  of  contractors 
and  owners  and  capitalists,  and  that  the  banks — as 
is  not  impossible  soon — were  to  decide  that  they  will 
do  no  business  nor  loan  any  money  except  upon 
certain  fixed  prices  for  labor  and  for  material,  would 
they  exceed  their  right  in  the  case  if  the  workingmen 
do  not  exceed  theirs  now?  But  it  would  be  con- 
spiracy against  the  public.  And  the  public  is  a 
fiction.  It  has  not  had  personality  nor  identity 
enough  to  protest  against  the  labor  oppression  and 
protect  itself.  And  is  not  the  union  strike  a  con- 
spiracy? Why  is  one  not  as  much  a  conspiracy  as 
the  other?  And  if  one  is  permitted,  why  not  the 
other?  We  know  and  feel  the  absurdity  of  per- 
mitting any  body  of  men  privilege  beyond  the  law, 
and  especially  if  it  denies  other  men  their  privileges. 
The  workingman's  walking  delegate,  or  any  other 
agent  who  interferes  with  the  privilege  of  men  to 
work  where  they  please,  or  spies  upon  any  business 
and  interferes  with  it,  should  be  arrested  and  put 
before  the  courts  and  sharply  fined  or  sent  to  prison. 
He  should  be  treated  as  any  other  lawless  character 
is  treated.  Until  that  is  done,  we  shall  be  kept  in  a 
state  of  turmoil  and  no  man  can  predict  any  certainty 
in  business  or  labor. 

How  does  it  seem  to  native-born  Americans  that 
these  self-constituted  dictators  should  be  able  to  set 

258 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

up  their  authority  among  us?  We  have  a  Consti- 
tution, but  more  than  that  for  generations  we  were 
able  to  appeal  to  public  sentiment  and  it  was  about 
as  effective  administrative  law  as  we  had.  But  who 
thinks  of  making  such  an  appeal  now?  It  is  no 
longer  what  is  the  great  concentrated  and  common, 
the  universal  moral  sense?  but  what  of  votes  and 
what  of  trade?  The  acts  of  some  of  our  senators, 
with  symptoms  of  the  old-time  obedience  to  the  de- 
mands of  their  country,  are  throwing  a  scare  into 
the  so-called  public  by  ignoring  all  questions  of  po- 
litical expediency  and  submitting  the  higher  ques- 
tions: "What  is  the  demand  of  our  country?  How 
can  we  save  it  from  a  blind  sentimentalism  to  which 
it  is  attempted  to  sacrifice  it?'*  Until  there  is  a  like 
return  to  what  was  our  glorious  heritage  of  public 
sentiment,  men  in  key  positions  will  not  feel  the  call 
to  rescue  their  country  by  the  force  of  the  public 
appeal,  the  force  that  quickens  by  a  common  consent, 
that  strangely  and  suddenly  awakens  in  many  places 
at  once,  as  by  an  inspiration,  to  a  united  action,  when 
questions  carry  their  own  answers  and  when  all  men 
who  violate  law  are  criminals,  and  when  the  people 
who  keep  the  laws  are  the  best  custodians  of  the 
common  welfare.  It  is  the  spirit  that  seizes  men  in 
war  when  personal  sacrifices  are  reckoned  as  small 
things,  and  the  end  for  which  the  battle  is  on  is  the 
only  worthy  thing.  It  is  high  time  that  we  all  united 
in  a  vigorous  question:  "What  is  the  right  of  this 
thing,  why  is  it  here?"  Demand  its  credentials. 

259 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

Let  the  employer  inquire,  "Who  gave  you  authority 
to  order  me  about,  to  close  my  business,  to  forbid  my 
work?" 

We  insist  that  nothing  can  be  more  destructive  to 
our  great  republic  than  to  permit  any  practice  by  any 
man,  be  he  the  President  or  an  organization  of  men 
of  any  character  or  influence  whatever,  that  becomes 
a  purposed  and  planned  violation  of  law,  or  even 
the  long-practiced  and  recognized  rights  of  the 
citizens  of  our  country.  One  of  the  startling  fea- 
tures of  the  claims  of  labor  unions  is  that  excep- 
tions must  be  made  in  their  case  which  do  not 
obtain  with  other  people.  If  every  concession  is  not 
made  to  workingmen,  then  the  state  is  unfriendly 
and  the  party  is  discriminating  against  labor.  Pick- 
eting, posting,  striking,  meddling  with  business  that 
would  not  be  tolerated  must  be  legislated!  When  a 
body  of  men  comes  into  any  governing  economy  and 
sets  up  an  opposition  or  begins  to  rule  in  defiance  of 
law,  and  the  people  tamely  submit  to  it,  the  fate  of 
that  government  is  sealed.  The  only  hope  is  that 
the  abuses  will  become  so  glaring  that  a  reaction  will 
set  in  and  a  revolution  against  a  revolution  will  take 
place.  There  are  some  wholesome  intimations  that 
such  a  fear  is  coming  upon  the  chief  men  of  the  labor 
unions.  The  king  of  labor  unions,  previously  re- 
ferred to,  who  strode  down  the  gang  plank  of  the 
incoming  steamer  with  a  defiance  to  our  great  busi- 
ness leaders,  whom  he  notified  were  shorn  of  their 
crowns  and  were  uno  longer  monarchs  of  all  they 

260 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

survey,"  is  found  hurrying  to  warn  his  subjects  that 
they  must  call  off  their  threatened  strikes  and  firing 
lines.  He  hastens  into  a  New  York  daily  with  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  great  things  accomplished  in  his  reign 
and  to  counsel  the  conservation  of  the  things  gained. 
It  is  wise  advice,  if  forced  by  the  handwriting  on  the 
wall. 

The  people  are  beginning  to  ask  some  uncomfort- 
able questions.  Strikes  are  not  submitted  to  so 
tamely.  When  the  workingman  is  underpaid,  the 
public  will  listen  to  the  plea  for  an  increase,  but 
when  it  is  a  common  burden,  the  question  will  be- 
come very  practical:  Why  should  not  the  working 
man  bear  his  share  of  the  common  burden  of  the 
times?  Why  should  everything  be  adjusted  to  him? 
What  about  the  salaried  man  whose  salary  has  been 
decreased  by  over  one  half  by  the  sixty  per  cent 
dollar  at  which  he  is  paid,  and  when  the  cost  of 
living  pinches  him  more  severely?  Fortunate  he  is 
if  he  receives  an  increase  of  twenty-five  per  cent  with 
pay  of  the  same  dollar.  The  laboring  man  is  not 
the  only  man  who  feels  the  sharp  pinch  of  these 
times.  The  tradesman,  the  teacher,  the  preacher, 
the  thousands  of  small  farmers  and  village  folk,  and 
tens  of  thousands  more  not  necessary  to  mention,  are 
in  the  vise  of  these  hard  times,  and  suffer  far  more 
than  the  day  laborers.  The  farm  hand  is  boarded. 
His  clothes  are  always  inexpensive.  There  is  no 
reason  why  his  wage  should  be  more  than  doubled 
except  that  he  can  force  it.  The  day  laborer  whose 

261 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

pay  was  one  dollar  fifty  cents  per  day,  as  we  have 
shown  and  which  we  repeat  to  emphasize,  has  four 
dollars  a  day  because  while  the  boys  were  away  at 
war  he  could  get  it.  It  seems  as  though  the  whole 
country  turned  itself  over  into  the  hands  of  thieves, 
led  on  by  the  labor  unions  which  were  organized  to 
strike  if  their  commands  were  not  obeyed.  The 
correction  of  our  troubles  is  not  in  legislation 
against  cold  storage  and  high  prices  so  much  as  it 
is  in  sending  men  back  to  work  and  making  it  a 
penalty  to  forbid  any  man  to  work. 

The  walking  delegates,  hundreds  of  them  through 
the  country,  are  doing  more  to  keep  prices  beyond 
the  reach  of  people  of  moderate  circumstances 
than  any  other  influence.  They  go  out  to  demand 
that  the  workingman,  not  of  the  country  but  of  the 
unions  comprising  a  minority  of  laborers,  shall  have 
what  they  set  as  their  price,  whoever  is  paid  less 
than  his  needs.  The  government  has  been  a  party 
to  this  partiality  until  it  has  bred  nests  of  arrogant 
vipers  all  over  the  country  and  now  appeals  to  Con- 
gress to  legislate  us  back  into  prewar  prices.  You 
might  as  well  legislate  the  stars  in  their  courses.  Let 
all  men  who  desire  to  work  be  treated  alike.  Put 
down  the  arrogance  of  a  minority  of  labor  that  pro- 
fesses to  be  the  whole  body  of  workingmen,  and  give 
every  man  a  chance  to  go  to  work  and  add  to  the 
world's  production.  Nothing  else  will  reinstate 
normal  conditions.  The  curse  of  this  time  is 
paternal  meddling  with  the  labor  calling  of  the 

262 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

country.  The  vote-getting  places  everything  into 
the  dictation  of  one  man,  who  boasts  that  he  con- 
trols the  President,  the  secretary  of  war,  the  secre- 
tary of  the  navy,  and  the  secretary  of  labor. 

When  we  look  for  the  secret  of  the  startling 
prices  of  food  and  clothes  and  attempt  to  locate  the 
causes,  we  have  not  far  to  go.  The  way  of  thou- 
sands of  producers  is  barred;  and  if  they  are  not 
always  successfully  prevented  from  offering  their 
services  to  the  country,  they  are  enrolled  in  the 
lists  of  extortioners  by  the  artificial  conditions 
forced  by  strikes.  But  to-day  the  men  who  are  most 
reasonable  in  their  wage,  and  at  the  same  time  who 
offer  more  hours  and  do  more  efficient  work  are  the 
nonunion  mechanics.  Yet  we  face  the  astounding 
statement  that  these  men  shall  not  be  permitted  to 
work  without  incurring  the  enmity  of  the  unions. 
The  country  needs  them,  and  in  many  instances  the 
people  prefer  them,  but  their  employment  will  inter- 
fere with  the  union,  which  insists  upon  forcing  men 
into  its  ranks  whether  they  wish  to  enlist  or  not;  and 
if  they  will  not  consent,  they  must  stop  work  or  take 
the  perilous  chances  of  being  maimed,  have  their 
wives  and  children  insulted,  and  their  homes  burned. 
If  there  is  any  change  in  that  program,  it  is  new  and 
because  the  raw  and  barbarous  Bolshevism,  which  is 
now  insidiously  seeking  control  of  the  unions,  must 
be  restrained.  But  nearly  as  bad  things  have  been 
done  in  this  country,  except  judicial  executions,  as 
have  been  done  in  Russia  and  the  difficulty  of  bring- 

263 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ing  the  murderers  and  incendiaries  to  justice  is 
notorious. 

Standing  one  day  in  a  house  just  being  completed, 
a  walking  delegate  appeared  and  brusquely  asked: 
"Who  is  going  to  paint  this  house?" 

"I  am  going  to  paint  it  I"  To  the  next  question 
the  same  answer  was  given,  "I  am  going  to  paint 


it." 


The  delegate  walked  away  sullenly,  with  an  im- 
plied threat  which  he  did  not  dare  enforce.  Now 
the  courage  is  not  lacking.  Though  it  does  not  take 
a  violent  form  at  present,  what  it  will  do  in  the 
future  remains  to  be  seen.  One  of  the  worst  evils 
of  the  walking  delegate  plan  is  that  it  turns  your 
neighbor  into  your  enemy,  leads  peaceable  citizens 
to  justify  their  violence.  Suspicion  is  awakened, 
resentment  is  aroused,  and  there  is  an  irritating  body 
influencing  the  social  conditions  of  those  who  ought 
to  be  the  best  of  neighbors. 

The  principles  on  which  unions  move  and  have 
their  being,  and  the  methods  they  apply  to  accom- 
plish their  ends  unfit  men  to  act  as  judicious  and 
wise  representatives.  Such  a  thing  as  equality  of 
rights,  of  concessions  to  others  is  not  known  among 
them.  They  start  out  with  the  assumption  that 
what  they  claim  is  an  indisputable  authority.  No 
court  gives  it  to  them,  and  it  has  not  been  voted  as  a 
concession  by  their  neighbors.  They  start  out  their 
representative  to  announce  their  plans  and  assert 
their  claims.  He  issues  a  threat.  He  invites 

264 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

destructive  riots.  He  is  in  no  sense  a  delegate.  He 
is  a  dictator 

The  teachings  he  has  heard  inside,  the  narrowness 
of  the  principles,  the  absurd  claims  of  rights  by  the 
destruction  of  the  rights  of  others,  make  up  the 
walking  delegate  to  the  mind  of  the  community.  He 
becomes  a  nuisance  and  a  menace. 

Take  the  chief  functionary.  He  never  has 
thought  of  anything  but  the  enforcement  of  union 
claims  which  are  his  own  creation.  Horizons  so 
narrow  and  upon  such  low  levels,  purposes  so  selfish, 
interests  of  one  class  and  kind,  which  permit  no  con- 
sideration of  those  whose  interests  differ,  make  it 
impossible  for  their  author  and  champion  to  grasp 
statesman  conceptions  and  to  lead  safely  men  in  a 
land  of  such  broad  and  at  the  same  time  complex 
interest.  It  is  unfortunate  that  interests  so  im- 
portant should  be  narrowed  down  to  increase  of 
wage,  length  of  working  hours,  and  the  dictation  of 
the  terms  upon  which  all  men  shall  work.  What 
can  you  expect  of  the  reaction  upon  such  a  leader  but 
what  you  see  reflected  in  the  walking  delegate? 
Have  you  ever  known  the  community  to  select  such 
men  for  high  representative  positions?  Do  they 
find  their  way  into  legislative  bodies?  Are  they  on 
the  bench?  Are  they  our  mayors,  aldermen,  and 
assemblymen?  They  are  discredited  by  the  com- 
munity. They  have  no  thought  in  common  with 
their  fellow  men.  They  are  a  type  of  men  unfitted 
for  leadership  by  the  doctrine  of  the  organization 

265 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

which  sends  them  out.  Their  narrowness  and  in- 
solence and  ignorance  create  resentment  and  re- 
sistance wherever  they  come.  They  are  not  the 
friends  of  the  manufacturer  or  the  builder,  and  fail- 
ing to  secure  the  end  they  seek  by  a  diplomacy  which 
they  do  not  know  how  to  use,  what  more  natural 
than  that  they  should  incite  the  strike  as  the  last 
resort?  That  is  the  only  vindication  of  their  claim 
to  the  coveted  positions  they  hold.  It  is  not  strange 
that  they  are  what  they  are  because  they  are  what 
the  organizations  are  which  send  them  out  to  disturb 
business  and  not  to  tranquillize  it. 

Men  are  the  representatives  of  the  company  the] 
keep.  The  man  of  the  church,  whether  genuine  01 
counterfeit,  takes  on  the  likeness  of  the  church. 
Forms  of  business  put  their  trademark  upon  then 
travelers  and  agents.  The  walking  delegate  is 
feathered  in  the  nest  where  he  was  hatched  an< 
where  he  grew.  He  does  not  need  to  announa 
himself. 

He  would  not  be  needed  by  the  Masonic  order, 
nor  by  the  Odd  Fellows,  nor  by  a  church  or  syna- 
gogue. He  is  required  by  a  cause  which  does  not 
commend  itself,  which  purposes  to  oppress  and  arbi- 
trarily compel  an  unwilling  constituency.  It  is 
cause  which  if  left  to  its  own  principles  and  th< 
merits  of  its  cause  would  tumble  into  pieces.  On< 
of  the  best  things  labor  unions  could  do  for  them- 
selves would  be  to  test  their  inherent  merits  by  get 
ting  rid  of  their  walking  delegates.  That  they  cai 

266 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  WALKING  DELEGATE 

not  force  much  longer  their  obnoxious  demands  upon 
the  people  is  becoming  every  day  more  apparent. 
The  resistance  is  rapidly  increasing.  Nothing  so 
un-American  can  live  on  American  soil. 


267 


CHAPTER  XIII 
MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

I  HAVE  gone  far  enough  to  show  the  un-American 
character  of  the  labor  union  as  it  now  stands.  It  is 
in  violation  of  every  principle  upon  which  our  coun- 
try was  founded,  and  it  never  can  harmonize  and 
have  a  forceful  relation  to  the  country  until  it 
changes  radically  its  principles  and  leaders.  It  is  an 
attempt  to  set  up  a  government  and  dictate  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  men  within  a  government  which 
covers  all  of  our  rights  by  legislation,  courts  and  ex- 
ecutives chosen  by  all  the  people. 

The  American  people  never  will  consent  to  such 
arrogant  and  insolent  dictation.  It  is  not  strange 
that  this  poisonous  exotic  has  flourished  and  got  its 
roots  so  deeply  planted.  It  is  the  American  trait  to 
tolerate  every  new  thing  and  often  perilously.  Tol- 
eration is  mistaken  for  liberty.  We  tolerate  a 
seditious  press  and  listen  to  traitorous  public  speech. 
Men  and  women  always  have  organized  themselves 
secretly  for  any  purpose,  even  for  the  destruction  of 
life  and  property.  The  labor  union  has  come  in 
under  the  general  laxity  and  indifference,  and  has 
grown  up  among  us  until  it  has  passed  from  control 
of  labor  to  defiance  and  dictation  of  courts  an< 

268 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

federal  offices  and  even  served  notice  on  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  that  his  word  "will  not 
go" !  Appeals  of  suffering,  of  cold  and  hunger  and 
sickness,  are  fairly  trampled  under  foot  by  selfish- 
ness that  has  become  heartless  and  brutal.  The 
blind  assertion  of  this  selfish  power  has  led  men  to 
violate  contracts  and  to  disregard  their  oaths  of 
office.  It  has  robbed  them  of  every  gentlemanly 
instinct,  and  made  them  cowardly  and  brutal  in  their 
conduct  toward  those  neighbors  who  insist  upon 
their  rights  as  free  men.  They  call  them  scabs  for 
being  and  doing  what  the  Constitution  of  their 
country  guarantees  to  them.  They  teach  their  chil- 
dren in  their  homes  to  use  this  vile  language  and 
carry  it  out  upon  the  streets  and  into  the  school 
yards.  It  works  against  religion  and  the  church  and 
alienates  the  best  of  friends  and  gets  into  the  politics 
of  the  community  and  its  trade,  and  perverts  the 
whole  social  order. 

How  long  do  rational  people  imagine  that  such  a 
condition  can  go  on  without  becoming  more  than  a 
passing  menace  to  the  country?  It  has  been  depre- 
cated by  self-respecting  men  and  women  who  have 
cherished  the  hope  that  its  own  intolerant  and  coarse 
spirit  would  react  as  correction.  But  we  are  now 
awakening  to  the  fact  that  wrong  does  not  correct 
itself  by  evolution  of  more  wrong,  as  we  face  a  revo- 
lution broadly  hinted  by  prominent  leaders  and 
openly  preached  by  its  bolder  agitators.  The  latter 
promises  the  workingmen,  but  only  the  union  work- 

269 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ingman,  that  his  case  in  court  will  be  adjudicated 
without  regard  to  facts  or  evidence,  and  that  private 
property  will  be  confiscated  by  the  workingmen 
"who  have  created  it."  Homes,  land,  stocks  and 
bonds,  wives  and  cattle  will  pass  into  the  hands  of 
the  laboring  people.  This  is  the  secret  goal.  How 
the  property  will  be  any  less  private  when  it  is  robbed 
and  stolen  and  handed  over  to  individuals  of  the  rob- 
ber gang,  they  do  not  tell  us.  It  is  high  time  for 
this  great  land  to  awake  to  the  mischief  which  is 
being  wrought  by  these  pirates  upon  private  rights 
j;nd  property,  emboldened  by  their  numbers,  and 
boasted  as  reaching  into  millions  of  members,  with 
the  courage  and  energy  of  a  Hansen  of  Seattle  and 
a  Coolidge  of  Massachusetts.  We  must  serve 
notice  that  the  limit  has  been  passed  and  that  any 
further  aggression  will  be  treated  as  crime,  and 
crime  with  severest  penalties  attaching.  There  are 
some  things  in  the  earth  which  should  not  be  for- 
gotten nor  forgiven.  We  do  not  forgive  a  Benedict 
Arnold,  who  sought  to  betray  our  land,  young  and 
defenseless,  into  the  hands  of  a  foreign  invader, 
We  will  not  forgive  men  among  us,  enjoying  our 
liberties,  earning  their  livelihood  from  our  oppor- 
tunities, having  their  security  and  safety  in  our 
laws,  who  foster  in  any  organization  to  which 
they  belong  any  destructive  doctrine  or  men  who 
covertly  or  in  any  way  seek  to  overthrow  the 
institutions  of  our  country  and  substitute  the 
lawlessness  which  is  a  brigandage  of  robbery  and 

270 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

a  reign  of  terror.  Ignorance  of  consequences 
is  no  excuse  for  such  men,  for  there  is  no 
excuse  for  ignorance  in  this  country.  How  can  any 
man  fail  to  see  the  present  tendencies  of  the  hour? 
What  plainer  source  of  unrest,  what  clearer  cause  of 
the  high  cost  of  living  is  there  than  the  failure  of 
production  by  shortened  hours  and  by  increase  of 
pay  granted  to  constantly  increasing  inefficiency  of 
labor?  The  whole  system  is  a  curse  to  our  country, 
and  in  it  one  evil  breeds  another  until  it  is  swarming 
with  parasites  of  infection  and  destruction. 

I  warn  the  workingman  who  was  my  neighbor 
that  he  is  already  late.  The  day  is  far  spent.  He 
should  have  wakened  long  ago.  Millions  of  dollars 
in  wage,  in  property,  and  ruined  business,  and  tens 
of  thousands  of  lives,  are  traced  to  his  door. 
History  will  write  a  black  chapter  of  this  whole 
matter.  Happy  the  men  who  take  the  warning  of 
their  friends  and  escape  from  the  responsibility  of 
destructive  forces  into  which  they  innocently  have 
been  beguiled  by  the  vicious  leaders  to  whom  they 
intrusted  themselves.  These  men  were  not  Ameri- 
cans. They  have  never  had  a  constructive  thought. 
They  have  joined  themselves  to  the  unions  to  use 
them.  They  live 'from  the  fees  and  fines.  They 
have  every  motive  to  keep  up  a  condition  of  unrest. 
They  are  frightened  by  any  possible  overthrow  of 
organized  labor  and  the  kind  of  it  which  secures 
their  purpose.  They  stop  at  nothing  which  will  fix 
their  hold  more  firmly  upon  the  greatest  following 

271 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

in  the  country,  a  following  which  gives  them  a  grip 
upon  the  President  of  these  United  States  and  upon 
the  congressmen,  the  courts  and  the  legislators;  and 
giving  them  that  grip  for  themselves,  senators  stand 
aside  for  them  at  the  White  House.  Attorney-gen- 
erals are  notified  as  to  the  unwisdom  of  the  laws  they 
administer,  and  senatorial  committees  are  notified 
that  laws  which  they  prefer  to  recommend  will  not 
be  obeyed  if  they  are  passed.  And  labor  leaders 
are  supported,  obeyed,  and  championed  by  citizens 
in  my  town  and  in  hundreds  of  towns  throughout  this 
broad  commonwealth.  And  what  comes  out  of  it 
all  to  my  town  or  to  the  country?  Who  is  the 
better  off?  Their  lies  are  believed  when  they  say 
that  they  opposed  strikes  which  they  secretly  insti- 
gated and  encouraged,  and  which  they  promote  by 
attacks  upon  government  injunctions  which  seek  only 
to  save  the  people  from  the  peril  of  winter  without 
bread  and  fuel.  How  can  our  neighbors  be  re- 
motely joined  to  any  such  infamous  procedure? 
The  owners  of  the  soft  coal  mines  brand  Mr.  Gom- 
pers's  description  of  conditions  in  the  mines  as  false 
in  every  sentence  of  his  statement  sent  out  to  the 
unions  through  the  press,  and  offer  to  prove  their 
charge  against  him  by  any  tribunal  sent  by  the  gov- 
ernment for  the  facts.  Every  informed  man  knows 
that  the  leaders  did  all  that  they  could  do  through  all 
the  land  to  create  prejudice  against  capital  which  em- 
ploys labor  and  against  any  effort  of  the  government 
to  restrain  oppressive  and  destructive  action  of 

272 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

unions  and  preserve  to  nonunion  men  their  liberties 
as  citizens. 

How  long  is  it  going  to  take  men,  to  whom  God 
has  given  eyes,  to  see  the  true  situation  and  rise  up 
and  shake  off  the  leeches  who  have  destroyed  their 
unions  and  brought  them  into  disrepute  throughout 
their  country?  Do  they  think  that  there  would 
have  been  any  objection  to  the  Boston  police  joining 
a  union  if  unions  had  not  become  notorious  in  their 
inimical  attitude  toward  the  country  and  too  dis- 
tinctly partisan  in  a  community  for  officers  of  the  law 
to  be  trusted  in  them? 

Were  the  union  what  it  ought  to  be,  there  would 
e  no  objection  to  police  officers  joining  it.  They 
oin  the  Masons  and  the  Odd  Fellows.  They  join 

e  churches  and  Red  Cross,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and 
nights  of  Columbus.  The  country  says  it  is  not 
safe  for  them  to  join  labor  unions  or  form  unions 
under  control  of  union  leaders,  or  obey  union 
rules. 

It  is  astounding  that  intelligent  men  will  join 
themselves  to  force  their  will  against  the  majority 
of  their  fellow  citizens  in  a  country  where  govern- 
ment is  by  the  consent  of  the  majority.  The  labor 
union  is,  and  always  has  been,  a  minority  of  the 
workingmen  of  our  country.  Not  one  workingman 
in  fifty  in  the  country  belong  to  a  union  or  has  any 
use  for  it.  And  yet  it  dictates  terms  of  labor,  forces 
up  cost  of  buildings  and  manufacture  and  the  prices 
of  living,  and  attempts  with  violence  to  say  where 

273 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

men  who  are  not  associated  with  them  shall  or  shall 
not  be  employed.  Any  man  with  red  blood  in  his 
veins  will  resist  such  insolent  assumption.  No  man 
worthy  of  the  blood  of  the  founders  of  this  land  will 
permit  any  man  to  invade  his  rights  and  liberties  as  a 
free  citizen.  It  lacks  only  a  little  further  awaken- 
ing, the  ripening  of  the  time  for  free  Americans  to 
arise  and  exterminate  such  institutions  and  sweep 
out  of  the  country  the  leaders  who  dare  to  set  up  an 
authority  in  this  republic  to  control  communities 
without  law  and  without  justice  to  serve  their  selfish 
ends.  Selfishness  never  has  won  among  intelligent 
peoples.  There  is  not  a  monument  in  the  land 
reared  to  selfishness,  lawlessness,  and  piracy  upon 
human  rights. 

What  can  be  done  with  the  union  which  pirates 
men's  rights?  Withdraw  from  it;  leave  it  to  its 
own  kind  only.  It  lives  by  having  on  its  rolls  re- 
spected men  who  acquiesce  in  its  principles  while 
refusing  active  part  in  its  violences.  But  they  count 
with  it.  Their  money  supports  it,  and  their  names 
give  it  standing  and  influence.  Left  to  those  who  give 
it  its  characters  and  who  represent  its  treasonable 
and  inhuman  purposes,  it  would  fall  to  pieces  by  the 
light  which  falls  upon  it.  Light  causes  a  living  tree 
to  grow;  it  destroys  a  dead  one  and  rots  it  down  to 
its  roots. 

The  problem  of  what  to  do  with  the  destructive 
leaders  who  are  the  authors  of  counsels  which  have 
destroyed  the  labor  unions  is  most  puzzling. 

274 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

Certain  poisonous  characters  of  a  community  are 
difficult  to  remove,  because  when  sent  out  of  one 
place  they  go  to  another  or  scatter  more  widely.  It 
is  often  said  that  they  should  be  deported,  and  that 
would  be  the  easy  way  if  it  could  be  done.  A  ship 
named  Deportation  should  be  put  into  commission 
at  once.  But  there  is  no  port  to  which  it  could  be 
cleared.  There  is  no  place  on  earth  where  they 
would  not  be  a  greater  curse  than  they  are  here,  for 
there  is  no  place  which  could  take  care  of  them  and 
restrain  them  as  we  can.  It  is  a  pity  that  we  do  not 
own  some  great  island,  a  St.  Helena,  a  Perrim,  a 
Devil's  Island,  where  we  might  export  these 
creatures,  as  they  do  the  dogs  out  of  Constantinople, 
to  prey  on  each  other,  and  guard  them  there  that  no 
one  might  come  near  them  and  no  one  escape  from 
among  them.  And  let  them  build  up  a  government 
there  to  suit  themselves.  That  is  not  what  they 
want.  They  do  not  purpose  to  build  up  anything. 
They  want  to  destroy,  and  there  would  be  nothing  to 
destroy  in  such  a  place.  They  would  need  no 
schools — they  thrive  on  ignorance;  no  churches — 
they  are  damned  already;  no  property — they  hate 
capitalists;  no  law — they  recognize  no  restraint  and 
they  are  a  law  to  themselves.  No  one  would  miss 
them,  for  they  add  nothing  to  any  country's  peace  or 
prosperity  or  safety.  They  have  done  nothing  but 
curse  every  land  where  they  have  lived.  What  a 
shout  would  go  up  from  millions  on  the  shore  the 
day  they  sailed  away !  and  nobody  would  want  them 

275 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ever  to  come  back  again.     What  a  wail  would  they 
hear  where  they  landed,  if  any  one  lived  there ! 

Alas !  we  have  no  such  island  to  which  to 
send  these  restless,  infectious  invaders  who 
have  come  like  an  Egyptian  plague  among  us, 
though  not  sent  by  God  as  a  judgment,  but  by 
the  devil,  whose  sons  they  are.  And  having  no 
island  for  banishment,  and  carelessly  having  per- 
mitted them  to  gain  citizenship,  we  cannot  return 
them  to  their  ancestral  lands.  We  can  only  lament 
that  we  have  no  place  where  we  can  plant  such  a 
colony.  We  cannot  find  a  state  which  will  tolerate 
them.  We  cannot  purchase  any  territory  from  the 
borders  of  which  there  would  not  come  up  an  outcry 
of  protest  against  the  possibilities  of  such  neighbors 
on  its  state  line.  But  we  have  some  laws  left  yet. 
They  have  not  all  been  turned  over  to  this  and  other 
forms  of  socialism.  There  are  even  some  signs 
that  they  all  have  not  been  forgotten.  The  grand 
old  injunction  against  rioters  has  at  last  been  put 
into  commission.  If  decent,  self-respecting  men  all 
over  the  land  will  come  out  and  leave  these  leaders 
to  their  own  kind,  the  laws  of  our  country  will  make 
short  work  of  them.  They  will  be  without  voters 
to  threaten  our  Legislature  and  without  power  to 
menace  our  courts  and  congressmen.  They  will  be 
forced  to  seek  an  honest  living.  The  walking  dele- 
gates will  have  to  get  a  job,  the  orators  and  pro- 
moters of  discontent  will  find  a  lathe  or  forge  or 
miner's  pick  or  brick-mason's  trowel.  The  members 

276 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

of  the  unions  purged  of  the  curse  that  blighted  them, 
will  organize  on  a  new  basis  and  adopt  principles 
that  will  harmonize  with  the  institutions  of  their 
country  and  put  a  conscience  into  their  labor  and 
render  an  equivalent  for  the  wage  they  get,  and  the 
world  will  be  at  peace  once  more. 

If  they  do  not  do  these  things  voluntarily  and 
peaceably,  they  must  take  consequences  of  the  other 
method,  for  the  country  is  fast  coming  to  the  asser- 
tion of  majority  rule.  Those  who  have  long  been 
obliged  to  hunt  labor  secretly  and  borne  the  odium 
of  the  application  of  degrading  epithets  to  them- 
selves and  their  families  and  the  peril  of  bombs 
beneath  their  homes,  will  arise  in  force  and  ex- 
terminate the  reptiles  from  their  towns  and  neigh- 
borhoods. It  cannot  come  too  soon.  The  sooner 
it  comes,  the  less  will  have  to  be  done.  The  evil 
has  increased  marvelously  since  the  war  drew  to 
a  close.  The  boldness  of  the  violent  leaders  has  ap- 
peared in  every  strike  condition  of  which  they  have 
been  the  conspirators.  Let  the  issue  be  drawn  at 
once.  Many  men  will  find  themselves  enlisted  in  a 
campaign  for  their  country  as  patriotic  as  any  the 
world  has  known.  They  will  pay  the  price  of  their 
devotion,  their  courage,  their  conscience,  with  their 
blood.  But  it  will  be  a  small  price,  for  law  will 
stand  erect  and  justice  will  continue  to  hold  the 
scales.  The  sanctity  of  the  home  will  remain, 
men  of  sound  mind  and  industry  will  be  free, 
and  the  business  of  men  can  be  conducted  and  reck- 

277 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

oned  upon  a  basis  of  values  without  the  hazard  and 
uncertainty  of  a  meddlesome  element  cutting  down 
production. 

The  chief  gain  will  be  in  law.  There  can  be  no 
stability  without  law.  Men  without  law  are  ani- 
mals, carnivorous  animals  which  destroy  each  other. 
We  may  flatter  ourselves  that  things  could  not  hap- 
pen here  which  have  devastated  Russia.  We  are  in 
closer  communication.  We  could  more  quickly 
reach  distant  ports  and  reenforce  them.  We  are 
better  policed.  But  we  do  not  take  into  the  account 
the  slumbering  elements  in  the  most  of  our  cities, 
the  secretly  organized  bodies  of  men  and  women 
who  wait  their  chance,  or  what  they  think  would  be 
their  chance.  We  have  not  taken  the  measure  of 
the  depths  of  deception  into  which  the  minds  of  our 
citizens  have  fallen,  who  have  been  taught  to  charge 
life's  failures  to  the  successful.  There  is  a  measure 
of  conceit  about  that  which  is  mistaken  for  principle 
and  conscience,  and  which  fights  with  the  blindness  of 
fanaticism.  A  propaganda  has  been  going  on  for 
years,  trifling  in  its  proportions,  but  gaining  tre- 
mendous momentum  by  importations  and  socially  re- 
enforced  by  an  appeal  to  our  prosperity.  In  a  land 
of  such  exceptional  opportunities,  and  where  the  few 
become  rich  beyond  imagination,  there  must  be 
something  wrong  with  the  distribution,  is  the  clamor 
of  the  socialist.  His  logic,  that  all  men,  if  things 
were  right,  would  be  alike  in  all  things,  is  wonder- 
fully taking  to  crowds  who  have  not  succeeded,  if 

278 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

success  is  only  to  be  reckoned  in  money.  We  are 
unfortunate  in  that  there  is  so  much  in  America  for 
men  to  covet.  Our  greatness  is  our  peril.  Because 
we  have  much  is  no  reason  why  we  should  guard  less 
what  we  have.  We  should  not  be  deceived.  Hu- 
man nature  unrestrained  by  patriotism  or  religion  is 
the  same  dangerous  stuff  the  world  over,  and  we  have 
not  been  any  too  patriotic,  nor  any  too  religious. 
There  are  signs  that  the  whole  body  of  the  people 
has  a  serious  infection  of  money-getting.  There  is 
a  wild  passion  which  does  not  spend  itself  in  stock 
markets  and  which  is  not  too  safely  centered  in  the 
protection  of  the  country  nor  too  alert  against  the 
peril  of  its  foes. 

Much  is  said  by  the  agitators  about  the  money- 
making  passion  of  moneyed  people.  But  the  evi- 
dences are  clear  that  money  is  the  passion  of  the 
poor  as  well.  More  things  have  entered  the  life 
of  the  world  that  are  coveted.  More  luxuries  have 
been  turned  into  what  the  average  man  believes  to 
be  necessities.  More  things  have  been  placed  almost 
within  his  reach  and  he  reaches  out  beyond  his  ability 
to  pay  the  price,  and  he  demands  the  price.  The 
larger  question  of  how  it  is  to  come  is  set  aside  by 
an  insatiable  want.  It  is  not  true  that  working 
people  are  being  goaded  on  by  the  legitimate  and 
normal  expenses  which  have  arisen  far  above  wage. 
A  comparison  of  a  number  of  the  different  forms  of 
employment  shows  that  wages  have  increased  beyond 
the  cost  of  living  and  some  of  them  startlingly  so. 

279 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

The  unrest  of  laboring  men  has  its  roots  in  some- 
thing besides  necessity.  It  is  to  this  spirit  of  avarice 
that  the  agitator  makes  his  successful  appeal.  We 
must  come  back  to  the  old-fashioned  and  good- 
fashioned  ways  of  honest,  frugal,  and  temperate  liv- 
ing. They  were  safest  for  the  country  and  happiest 
for  those  who  lived  them.  Men  thrived  not  on 
making  much,  but  in  carefully  seeing  that  nothing 
was  lost  and  by  saving  the  little  things.  They  ad- 
justed themselves  to  production  and  lived  within 
their  income  and  their  wage,  and  had  a  genuine 
manhood  to  make  them  contented.  They  magnified 
law  and  the  rights  of  men.  They  were  philosophers 
in  the  shops  and  behind  the  plows.  Whether  that 
time  can  ever  be  brought  back  is  a  question,  for  in- 
ventions, mechanical  art,  trade  in  current  prices 
come  into  the  humblest  home  and  start  inquiry  and 
ambition  in  the  opening  mind  of  the  boy  and  girl  an< 
make  demands  which  call  for  increased  income.  Bui 
it  all  leaves  the  same  old  moral  law  which  protects 
every  man  in  his  own  and  gives  no  man  a  greatei 
right  than  his  neighbor. 

The  first  question  is  justice  and  truth  and  right- 
eousness. Any  remove  from  these  principles  boj 
with  us  in  the  homes  of  our  fathers  is  out  on  slipper] 
paths  which  end  at  precipices.  When  we  forget  th< 
old  home  lessons,  we  begin  to  trade  with  our  safel 
and  the  safety  of  our  country.  We  do  not  meai 
that  men  may  never  extend  beyond  the  home  life. 
No  country  has  ever  shown  that  possibility  to 

280 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

greater  degree  than  ours.  But  no  more  startling 
and  appalling  lessons  are  found  in  any  land  of  the 
disaster  of  forgetting  the  primitive  principles  of 
justice,  honesty,  and  the  square  deal  than  we  have 
in  these  United  States.  All  men,  the  man  who 
works  with  money  and  the  man  who  works  with  his 
hands,  should  heed  those  object  lessons  which  have 
been  strewn  along  all  our  pathways.  Happy  if  we 
are  never  used  for  such  object  lessons. 

The  course  upon  which  the  organized  working- 
man  is  being  launched  has  shown  plainly  its  fruits. 
They  are  dead  sea  apples.  They  are  mock  oranges. 
Nothing  can  be  so  appalling  as  a  land  without  law. 
Read  the  true  and  exact  stories  of  villages  in  Russia 
where  law  has  been  repealed.  Those  are  places, 
the  same  places,  where  lives  have  been  snuffed  out. 
They  are  places  where  women  have  learned  to 
murder  and  where  charity  has  been  bartered  and 
indescribable  horrors  have  reigned  with  the  terrors 
of  hell. 

No  man  ever  was  wise  enough  to  live  without  civil 
law,  and  no  man  ever  was  great  enough  to  govern 
other  men,  nor  lead  them,  without  civil  law.  A  ship 
were  safer  at  sea  without  a  compass  than  are  men 
among  themselves  without  moral  law.  The  best 
remedy  for  the  present  rapidly  increasing  tendencies 
which  threaten  the  poor  man's  cottage  as  they  do 
the  rich  man's  mansion — for  the  destroyers  seek  all 
from  both  the  rich  or  poor — is  to  apply  the  Golden 
Rule  outside  of  the  union  and  in  all  things  and  to 

281 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

live  loyally  as  freemen  the  laws  of  their  country 
living,  letting  live,  working  and  letting  work,  anc 
compelling  a  place  and  a  success  according  to  the 
talents  which  have  been  given  to  them. 

Freedom   is   worth   a   contest.     No  man  shoulc 
yield  it  if  with  it  must  go  manhood.     It  is  something 
that  can  take  no  account  of  prosecutions  or  scoffs 
and  jeers.     Having  its  basis  in  the  liberties  of  his 
country,  he  need  not  ask  who  beside  denies  it  to  him 
An  American  will  not  transfer  his  loyalty  to  any  man 
nor  association  of  men  at  the  price  of  their  influence 
That  is  treason  to  himself  and  no  man  can  afford 
at  any  cost  or  loss,  to  betray  himself.     One  of  the 
greatest  things  which  this  age  needs  is  that  men  put 
a  price  upon  themselves.     They  reckon  all  things  as 
assets  but  the  greatest  of  all.     That  they  leave  out 
It  is  not  what  a  man  has,  but  what  he  is.     He  is  not 
to  live  his  country's  freedom,  that  is  its  laws,  its 
privileges,  its  opportunities,  provided  in  its  institu 
tions.     That  is  objective.     The  greatest  is  the  con 
sciousness  of  what  he  is  within  himself.     The  great 
apostle  was  sublime  when  he  faced  his  accusers  with 
the  boast,  "I  am  a  citizen  of  no  mean  city."     It 
went  with  him  where  he  went.     It  was  what  he  was 
"You  may  take  me  out  of  my  job,  but  you  cannot 
take  me  out  of  myself.     You  may  spurn  me,  but  my 
name  is  in  the  keeping  of  a  higher  custodian."    Such 
a  man  cannot  be  craven.     No  argument  can  appea 
to  him  that  does  not  go  to  conscience  and  honor  anc 
the  centers  of  manhood.     It  was  that  type  of  man 

282 


MY  NEIGHBOR  A  FREE  MAN 

who  laid  deep  and  firm  the  foundations  of  our  land. 
They  would  brave  the  Atlantic  Ocean's  storms  and 
take  the  peril  of  death  on  a  new  and  untried  shore, 
but  they  would  not  surrender  their  convictions  of 
right  and  duty.  Every  New  Englander  is  proud 
of  his  sturdy  ancestors,  the  New  Yorkers  of  their 
Dutch  progenitors.  The  Virginian  boasts  his  Cava- 
liers: great  lines  of  descent  for  a  land  of  free  men. 
It  is  ours  to  be  worthy  of  it.  We  are  to  know  no 
dictators.  The  workingman  is  a  free  man. 


283 


CHAPTER  XIV 
MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

WHEN  the  -workingman  of  the  unions  finds  him- 
self in  violation  of  law  and  morals  it  ought  not  to 
take  him  long  to  turn  around  and  go  the  other  way. 
He  may  say  that  he  has  his  own  opinion  of  his  rights. 
It  does  not  matter  what  his  opinions  may  be,  he  is 
related  to  the  rights  of  other  men,  and  this  becomes 
an  obligation  and  he  has  a  duty  to  the  country  in 
which  he  lives,  and  must  consider  these  larger  claim; 
The  President  charges  immorality  upon  an  organiza- 
tion of  coal  miners  who  choose  approaching  wintei 
to    force   their   claims    for   higher   wage   with   th< 
threat  of  closing  the  mines  against  transportatioi 
upon  which  food  depends  and  the  comfort  of  hoj 
pitals  and  homes  also.     No  one  who  is  not  crazei 
by  the  strike  infection  will  say  that  the  President 
uses  too  strong  language.     The  threat  cited  is  im- 
moral.    The   Golden   Rule  is   a  prime  element  ii 
morality.     The  great  question  is  not  what  is 
man's  rights  until  what  is  right  for  all  men  has  firs! 
been  settled.     Nothing  can  make  my  right  whicl 
wrongs  my  neighbor.     The   circumstances  may  s< 
far  surpass  my  right  that  he  would  have  a  claim 
upon  my  life,  and  the  law  and  the  highest  public 
sentiment  would  say  that  I  did  my  duty  in  going  t< 

284 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

his  rescue  at  the  peril  of  my  life.  It  becomes  plain, 
then,  that  neither  my  business  nor  my  wage  can  en- 
danger his  life  nor  the  life  of  his  family.  If  the 
coal  miners  have  a  just  grievance,  they  must  make 
their  appeal  for  redress  in  a  way  that  will  not  starve 
nor  freeze  the  homes  of  the  people,  that  will  not 
stop  milk  trains  nor  coal  trains  on  the  way  to  infants 
or  the  sick  in  families  or  in  hospitals.  And  to  be 
indifferent  to  such  consequences  is  immoral  in  the 
extreme.  The  leaders  who  encourage  it  represent 
a  cruel  tyranny  that  is  suggestive  of  distant  ages  and 
that  is  not  possible  in  an  age  of  common  morality, 
and  that  has  for  one  of  its  tenets  mercy  even  to 
dumb  animals.  We  are  having  only  a  striking  illus- 
tration of  the  immoral  principles  which  have  been  ap- 
plied to  the  treatment  of  all  nonunion  men  in  labor 
union  controversies.  The  Golden  Rule  is  ignored, 
it  is  not  so  much  as  mentioned  by  union  men  when 
they  seek  to  force  the  demands  of  their  organization 
upon  a  community,  or  when  they  attempt  to  prevent 
nonunion  men  from  enjoying  the  privileges  which 
they  claim  for  themselves.  Their  whole  conduct  is 
immoral.  There  is  not  a  structure  of  morality  that 
could  stand  upon  such  foundations  an  hour.  It  is 
the  Nietzschean  morals,  which  know  no  self-denial 
but  are  founded  upon  the  primitive  instincts  of  the 
savage.  It  launched  the  world  into  a  war  against 
the  Christian  principles  which  apply  to  business,  to 
labor,  to  individuals,  and  to  nations.  It  went  down 
in  an  appalling  wreck  before  the  aroused  conscience 

285 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

of  mankind.  Not  a  remnant  of  it  should  be  left  in 
our  country,  and  anything  which  stands  for  it  should 
be  brought  to  judgment.  It  is  immoral  in  that  it 
has  not  a  thread  of  morality  woven  into  it.  The 
Golden  Rule  in  at  least  the  negative  form  has  had  a 
place  among  men  since  the  day  that  Cain  killed  his 
brother  Abel.  Without  it  there  can  be  no  brother- 
hood. What  is  the  difference  whether  you  slay 
Abel  or  leave  him  to  starve  and  freeze  to  death? 
What  different  is  the  spirit  which  would  forbid  a 
man  to  work  for  his  bread  for  his  family  unless  he 
works  in  a  way  that  is  against  his  conscience,  his 
sense  of  freedom  and  liberty,  by  an  authority  arbi- 
trary, self-assertive,  and  unrecognized  by  the  Con- 
stitution of  his  country?  It  is  immoral  if  there 
any  such  thing  as  morality  in  the  world.  It  violates 
and  tramples  upon  all  of  those  principles  upon  whicl 
our  land  was  founded  and  which  brought  the  Pil- 
grims to  our  shores. 

But  it  is  not  only  immoral,  it  is  criminal  as  w< 
A  man  can  defy  morals  often  and  remain  beyon< 
control.     Many  men  are  immoral,  and  known  to  be 
so,  and  unblushingly  proclaim  their  immorality,  am 
remain  beyond  reach.     They  ignore  the  moral 
and  keep  beyond  reach  of  civil  or  criminal  law.    Bui 
there  is  a  violation  of  moral  and  civil  law  which 
amounts  to  a  conspiracy.     It  is  a  combination  oi 
persons  to  do  an  evil  act,  or  to  do  anything  against 
anyone  which  is  punishable  by  law.     Can  anything 
be  more  evil  than  to  forbid  anyone  to  earn  food  for 

286 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

his  family  by  honest  labor  in  a  free  country?  Should 
anything  be  more  punishable  under  the  law  than  a 
combination  against  business,  with  threats  of  vio- 
lence, with  incendiarism  and  sabotage?  And  must 
the  state  leave  unrestrained  organizations  which  are 
known  to  foster  such  things  until  they  commit  the 
act  and  the  damage  is  done  beyond  repair? 

It  is  high  time  that  the  country  pronounced  with 
unmistakable    law    against    strikes    of    all    kinds. 
There  should  be  no  doubt  left  that  strikes  are  crimes. 
The  moral  features  can  be  applied  by  the  individual. 
The  conspiracy  can  be  used  by  the  state  against  all 
mspirators.     It  should  have  been  done  long  ago. 
[ad  it  been  done,  we  would  not  now  be  standing 
telpless,  notwithstanding  our  injunctions,  obeyed  by 
ie  leaders  of  an  indifferent  rank  and  file  of  strikers. 
"he  conspirator  would  not  be  left  to  roam  about 
lefying  the  government  and  breeding  contempt  for 
LW,  but  would  be  placed  where  he  would  have  time 
read  the  Constitution  and  learn  the  majesty  of  the 
iw.     Law  founded  upon  morals,  and  morals  mak- 
ig  effective  law,  is  the  crying  need  of  our  country 
-day.     The  Ten  Commandments  and  the  Beati- 
ides,   harmonizing  in   all  business   and  all   labor, 
d  constitute  a  platform  upon  which  both  could 
icet  with  few  difficulties  to  settle,  and  none  which 
rould  not  yield  without  violence  to  either  great  in- 
:rest  nor  harm  to  the  innocent  and  to  our  country, 
'his  leads  us  to  arbitration.     If  men  cannot  stand 
ipon  that  platform,  there  is  something  wrong,  some- 

287 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

thing  dangerous  to  the  country.  Where  men  will 
not  arbitrate,  there  is  distrust  of  one's  cause,  or  a 
determination  to  have  the  whole.  This  is  why  it 
becomes  necessary  for  arbitration  to  fix  contro- 
versies by  law.  Men  should  be  compelled  to  accept 
the  verdict  of  arbitration,  as  they  are  to  submit  to 
the  decisions  of  the  courts,  notwithstanding  that 
often  one  or  both  sides  are  dissatisfied.  This  has 
been  proved  by  centuries  of  experience  to  be  the  only 
way  for  the  affairs  of  men  to  be  safely  adjudicated. 
It  means  law  or  force,  and  force  means  riot  and 
murder.  There  is  no  reason  why  arbitration  may 
not  be  arranged  upon  a  basis  as  secure  as  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  State  or  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States.  It  should  be  kept  out  of  politics, 
and  separated  from  anything  like  either  interest  in- 
volved. It  should  be  a  Court  of  Arbitration,  con- 
stituted like  the  Supreme  Court.  Its  members 
should  be  nominated  by  the  President  of  the  United 
States  and  approved  by  the  Senate,  with  a  member 
each  from  the  North,  the  South,  the  East,  and  the 
West,  and  an  eminent  lawyer  from  the  country  at 
large.  It  ought  to  be  sufficiently  representative  of 
the  whole  country  to  command  the  confidence  of  all 
concerned.  They  should  be  men  of  eminent  char- 
acter, rather  than  with  special  acquaintance  with 
business  or  labor,  for  men  of  common  intelligence 
can  weigh  evidence,  and  men  of  large  views  have 
safe  horizons.  The  Court  of  Arbitration  should 
be  like  other  great  courts.  Such  a  court  would  com- 

288 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

mand  the  confidence  of  the  country  and  the  con- 
testants, and  it  would  be  but  a  short  time  before  the 
strike  would  be  obsolete  and  we  all  would  wonder 
that  human  intelligence  was  ever  so  low  and  human 
passion  ran  so  high  as  to  give  it  a  place  among  us. 
It  would  be  incredible  to  coming  generations  that  a 
great  and  free  people  ever  attempted  to  settle  great 
judicial  questions  by  the  contest  of  conflicting  inter- 
ests and  that  men  were  permitted  to  deny  personal 
rights  to  others  which  they  claimed  for  themselves. 
We  have  been  long  coming  to  realize  that  law 
mst  be  applied  to  the  labor  union  as  it  is  to  other 
bodies  of  men  and  to  other  interests.  We  have 
tried  to  dodge  the  issue,  and  the  more  since  it 
reached  political  proportions.  Class  legislation  has 
been  made  for  it,  and  there  have  been  exceptions 
favoring  the  unions  when  laws  relating  to  strikes  and 
boycotts  and  picketing  have  been  passed.  But  at 
last  the  union  leaders  themselves  have  forced  a  pub- 
lic sentiment  against  lawlessness  which  the  courts 
and  the  administration  cannot  disregard.  This 
arrogance  by  union  leaders  and  the  general  condi- 
tions throughout  the  country  call  for  law,  and  only 
law,  to  determine  the  rights  of  men.  The  people 
are  insisting  that  no  men  shall  be  permitted  to  take 
matters  into  their  own  hands  and  determine,  by  con- 
spiracy or  invasion  of  the  rights  and  property  and 
liberties  of  other  men,  their  contentions. 

In  a  word,  the  strike  has  had  its  day.     The  coun- 
try will  pass  a  law  that  all  strikes  and  lockouts,  ex- 

289 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

cept  against  riot,  are  criminal,  and  the  law  will  define 
the  crime  and  make  the  penalties  severe  enough  to 
prevent  it.  Common-sense  equity  will  sustain  such 
a  law.  It  violates  every  sense  of  justice  that  a  body 
of  men  shall  conspire  against  a  business  because  it 
hires  men  who  do  not  belong  to  its  organization,  or 
that  men  shall  be  at  liberty  to  assail  and  maim 
men  who  dare  to  work  at  given  places  and  times 
without  their  permission.  One  finds  it  difficult  to 
believe  where  such  things  obtain  in  America  that 
this  is  any  longer  a  land  of  free  men.  How 
has  it  gone  so  far?  Why  was  it  not  arrested 
in  the  first  instance?  Everyone  concedes  that  a  man 
who  is  not  satisfied  with  his  wage,  or  with  the  boss 
of  a  job,  has  a  right  to  quit  and  find  employment 
elsewhere.  But  it  is  another  thing  when  men  con- 
spire to  take  all  men  off  the  works  at  the  same  hour 
and  set  pickets  to  prevent  other  men  going  upon 
them  until  the  strikers  are  taken  back  on  their  own 
terms. 

Mr.  William  H.  Taft  has  made  an  astounding 
remark  about  the  coal  strikers,  if  reported  correctly, 
at  a  time  when  the  government  needed  his  voice,  and 
there  has  been  no  correction.  He  says,  "The  work- 
ingmen  have  a  right  to  organize  as  much  as  the  em- 
ployers have  that  right."  No  intelligent  man  hai 
ever  denied  them  that  right,  but  they  have  no  righl 
to  organize  to  prevent  me  from  doing  what  I  prefei 
to  do,  nor  to  interfere  with  my  business.  That  is  th< 
contention.  Judge  Gary,  to  whom  reference  is 

290 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

made,  has  not  objected  to  the  men  of  his  corporation 
organizing  within  their  rights,  and  for  purposes  of 
self-government,  or  the  betterment  of  their  condi- 
tion. He  objects,  as  every  sensible  man  with  any 
self-respect  and  courage  does,  to  his  employees  or- 
ganizing to  interfere  with  his  business,  to  decide 
what  wages  it  can  pay  and  what  men  shall  come  and 
go  with  their  disturbing  labor  doctrines  among  the 
workingmen  employed  by  the  corporation.  To  say 
that  laborers  have  a  right  to  organize  is  wide  of  the 
question  to-day.  Of  course  they  have,  if  they  do 
not  organize  to  meddle  with  other  men  who  have 

§much  right  not  to  organize  as  they  have  to 
ganize.  It  is  because  of  conflict  of  opinion  about 
j;ht  that  arbitration  is  indispensable. 
Mr.  Gompers  assails  the  government  and  pro- 
nounces the  injunction  of  the  courts  unjust  and  an 
invasion  of  human  freedom,  and  intimates  that  it 
will  not  be  obeyed.  As  to  the  safety  of  such  leader- 
ship in  a  time  of  excitement,  and  as  to  its  loyalty  to 
the  government,  the  public  will  safely  judge.  It 
quickly  takes  the  measure  of  such  a  man.  But  the 
important  thing  which  bears  upon  my  contention  is, 
Who  is  to  decide  the  justice  or  injustice  of  our  laws? 
A  law,  right  or  wrong  when  the  final  court  has  ren- 
dered its  decision,  must  be  obeyed.  If  it  is  right,  all 
loyal  citizens  will  be  glad  to  obey  it.  If  wrong, 
there  is  a  safe  way  provided  in  our  economy  to 
remove  it  or  to  revise  it.  If  there  are  inconven- 
iences, these  must  be  endured  until  regular  processes 

291 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

have  provided  the  remedy.  In  the  mean  time  the 
Court  of  Arbitration  is  the  safest  redress  for  all 
concerned. 

The  conditions  which  have  given  thoughtful  men 
apprehension  and  anxiety  have  developed  rapidly 
toward  a  state  within  the  state;  and  unsafe  leaders 
have  found  such  favor  in  the  government  and  have 
seen  so  small  resistance  to  the  strike  and  other  forms 
of  violence,  that  they  have  presumed  upon  an  au- 
thority which  they  are  startled  to  have  even  the 
United  States  courts  resist  and  rebuke.  So  deep- 
seated  has  become  the  lawless  assumption  that  it 
requires  a  night  and  half  a  day  to  decide  that  the 
safe  thing  will  be  to  obey  the  law.  The  indication 
is  very  plain  that  the  law  would  have  been  defied 
had  there  been  any  hope  of  success.  The  statement, 
therefore,  that  "We  cannot  afford  to  disobey  our 
government"  will  deceive  no  one,  nor  will  it  cause 
the  country  to  relax  a  vigilance  to  which  it  has  at 
last  awakened,  none  too  soon  to  preserve  the  great 
barriers  against  our  deadliest  foes.  Should  oppor- 
tunity offer,  they  would  quickly  forget  all  regard  for 
their  country  at  every  point  of  difference  where  they 
have  always  shown  their  greatest  allegiance.  With 
them,  related  by  not  too  great  distances,  are  those 
men  who  promised  in  the  same  week  destruction  of 
all  government,  the  removal  of  all  lines  that  mark 
private  property,  and  the  rejection  God  and  re- 
ligion as  useless  superstitions. 

Whenever  a  man  puts  his  interests  above  those 
292 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

of  his  neighbor,  and  refuses  to  be  restrained  by  law, 
the  steep  downward  grade  of  that  man's  descent  is 
swift  and  certain.  When  concessions  are  made  to 
any  man's  self-rule  it  kindles  fires  that  soon  pass 
beyond  control.  If  any  law  can  be  defied,  if  any 
court  order  can  become  a  subject  for  debate,  it  shows 
how  far  a  course  of  conduct  has  proceeded  and  how 
dangerous  it  is.  If  it  does  not  pass  over  into  ex- 
tremest  forms  of  anarchy,  it  is  largely  responsible 
for  them.  It  should  not  be  left  to  courts  with  in- 
junction. All  such  questions  should  go  before  the 
Court  of  Arbitration,  with  authority  to  issue  writs 
and  fix  penalties. 

No  class  of  men  can  live  without  law  and  not 
corrupt,  in  time,  the  whole  body  politic.  Every 
strike  is  a  blow  at  the  jurisprudence  of  the  whole 
country  and  should  be  resisted,  not  only  for  the 
injury  it  does  to  business,  but  for  the  harm  that 
comes  to  a  fundamental  institution  of  the  country. 
Things  said,  like  the  demagogic  utterances  of  a 
labor  leader  who  rails  at  the  administration  and  the 
courts,  are  small  in  comparison  with  a  practice  which 
has  increased  in  defiance  of  good  order  and  law  until 
it  claims  recognition  everywhere,  and  boasts  that  it 
cannot  be  stopped  by  law.  If  that  is  true,  what 
would  hinder  the  nonunion  men,  in  vast  majority, 
from  striking  against  the  strikers,  and  wrecking 
their  lodge  rooms  and  running  them  off  the  jobs  by 
which  they  have  been  denied  work?  Certainly,  any 
tacit  consent  or  any  law  which  makes  the  slightest 

293 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

concession  to  the  strike  practice,  should  be  repealed 
at  once  unless  we  are  going  to  allow  men  to  settle 
their  own  difficulties  by  the  strike.  Are  we  ready 
for  that  sovietism?  We  have  been  winking  at  a 
form  of  anarchy  in  our  own  country  which,  carried 
to  its  conclusion,  is  of  the  same  character  as  the 
Bolshevism  which  we  abhor.  It  is  not  safe  because 
we  are  strong.  If  we  are  not  strong  enough  to 
prevent  its  incipiency,  we  shall  not  stop  its  extreme 
peril  when  that  comes. 

We  are  passing  through  our  lesson.  We  have 
had  our  warning.  Our  houses  of  Congress  have 
many  weighty  things  to  do  to  put  us  back  upon  the 
secure  platform  of  the  republic,  but  it  has  nothing 
more  important  than  to  establish  respect  for  law 
among  all  the  people.  It  should  insist  that  all 
strikes,  which  have  multiplied  into  hundreds  of  every 
kind  of  contention,  shall  be  replaced  by  the  law  in 
the  form  of  a  Court  of  Arbitration. 

One  of  the  great  events  in  our  history,  one  which 
will  take  its  place  among  the  crises,  is  the  settlement 
of  the  coal  strike  leaders'  revolt,  by  the  courts,  in  a 
way  so  decisive,  so  effectual,  and  so  prompt  that  it  is 
amazing  that  it  never  has  been  tried  before.  Atlanta 
was  not  inviting  to  the  agitating  leaders,  and  they 
could  figure  out  for  themselves  no  other  destiny. 
Mr.  Gompers  proposed  to  go,  but  he  didn't!  Il 
was  a  force,  unexpected,  which  Mr.  Gompers 
charged  to  the  sickness  of  the  President.  He  was 
mistaken.  He  had  not  heard  the  moving  in  the  tops 

294 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

of  the  mulberry  trees.  The  whole  people  had  never 
been  imperiled  before.  They  had  looked  on  and 
seen  contractors  losing  money  and  laborers  denied 
right  of  labor  as  a  penalty  for  not  joining  the  unions. 
They  had  seen  town  housings  held  up  and  property 
destroyed.  But  these  things  touched  only  a  few. 
Now  they  were  face  to  face  with  cold  and  hunger 
and  the  paralysis  of  business  everywhere,  and  it  was 
a  public  and  a  general  interest.  The  people  were 
all  connected  with  it,  and  the  people  were  the  coun- 
try, and  at  last  the  lawless  tyrants  felt  the  force  of 
the  whole  people.  The  petty  tyrants,  who  had 
domineered  and  dictated  to  business,  learned  for  the 
first  time  how  mighty  is  law.  They  could  bluster 
and  threaten  and  tell  how  the  trouble  was  to  be  in- 
volved and  made  impossible  of  adjustment  by  the 
mixing  in  of  the  courts.  They  could  appeal  to 
justice,  which  never  before  had  had  a  place  in  their 
vocabulary,  and  demand  rights  from  a  source  they 
always  had  ignored.  And  then  they  could  whimper 
and  plead  abuse  of  privileges  as  American  citizens ! 
But  the  courts  proceeded  with  quiet  dignity,  backed 
by  an  hundred  million  people.  And  they  obeyed! 
There  was  nothing  else  for  them  to  do.  They  were 
not  contending  with  strike-breakers.  They  were 
not  resisting  sympathetic  police.  They  were  not  en- 
couraged by  an  apologetic  press.  They  were  not 
invited  into  compromising  conferences.  The  law 
spoke,  and  they  obeyed.  They  were  dealing  with 
the  law  and  the  law  courts.  All  of  which  shows 

295 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

that  a  Court  of  Arbitration — the  law — is  the  way  to 
settle  strikes. 

The  wail  of  the  petty  tyrants  was  that  the  govern- 
ment had  joined  the  plutocrats  to  ruin  the  unions. 
But  the  government  had  joined  nobody  but  the 
whole  people  and  it  was  by  no  means  to  ruin  the 
unions.  If  protection  of  the  people,  or  any  class  of 
the  people,  will  ruin  the  unions,  then  they  ought  to 
be  ruined.  Nothing  has  a  right  to  thrive  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  rights  and  safety  of  the  government, 
nor  by  the  embarrassment  and  loss  of  citizens  with 
equal  rights.  Nothing  has  done  the  unions  so  much 
harm  as  the  claim  by  their  leaders  of  a  superior 
privilege  which  puts  them  beyond  restrictive  legisla- 
tion and  the  mandates  of  the  courts.  This  is  not  a 
country  of  government  by  injunction  when  it  applies 
to  the  union !  This  is  not  a  government  of  democracy 
when  it  protects  a  nonunion  man  in  his  work!  It 
is  right  and  just  only  so  long  as  it  obeys  the  behests 
of  a  class,  a  minority  class,  and  gives  it  right  of  way 
over  every  other  class.  This  was  what  was  ruining 
the  unions.  An  autocracy  under  the  dictation  of  a 
most  oppressive  autocrat  was  reaching  out  for  con- 
trol of  business  and  of  all  labor,  even  the  forms 
which  were  nonunion.  That  was  what  made  the 
unions  unpopular  until  the  people  were  ready  to  arise 
against  them  and  the  government  reminded  them  of 
a  restraining  law.  It  was  "horrible, "  in  the  language 
of  their  chief  autocrat,  to  find  that  anything  so  pro- 
fane and  unholy  as  an  injunction  could  apply  to  an 

296 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

organization  which  had  asserted  its  tyranny  un- 
challenged so  long  that  the  general  government  con- 
cerning all  labor  matters  existed  by  the  leave  of  the 
federation  from  whose  leaders  the  President  and  the 
lawmakers  had  been  taking  orders  most  subservi- 
ently. One  or  the  other  must  go — the  government 
or  the  union.  It  was  well  for  the  union  that  it  de- 
cided to  go.  With  a  new  set  of  officers  to  replace 
those  who  have  discredited  themselves,  who  boasted 
their  willingness  to  go  to  prison  in  defiance  of  law, 
the  unions  will  take  a  new  and  respected  place.  It  is 
not  the  desire  of  anyone  to  destroy  and  remove  the 
unions,  if  they  will  cease  their  work  of  destruction 
and  serve  their  country  by  the  elevation  of  labor  and 
by  universal  justice  and  fairness  toward  all  laborers. 
We  only  want  to  know  whether  they  purpose  to  be  a 
part  of  the  country,  or  to  continue  to  control  the 
country.  Is  the  belated  utterance  of  one  of  their 
leaders,  uOur  country,"  something  new,  to  become 
the  common  and  familiar  sentiment  of  all  union 
members,  and  is  the  attack  upon  the  government  by 
Mr.  Gompers  to  be  repudiated  by  the  federation? 
If  so,  it  will  do  much  to  restore  labor  unions  in  the 
confidence  and  esteem  of  American  citizens  who 
place  their  Constitution  and  equal  liberty  to  all  men 
before  every  other  consideration. 

The  only  desire  of  those  who  have  long  protested 
the  disloyalty  and  intolerance,  the  arrogance  and  un- 
fairness of  the  union,  has  been  to  place  it  under  law 
and  bring  it  to  an  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  it  by 

297 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

no  means  represents  the  workingmen  of  this  country. 
They  want  the  strike  made  criminal,  whoever  uses 
it.  But  they  want  so  to  plan  it  with  a  great  court 
which,  influenced  by  no  consideration  but  justice  and 
right,  will  protect  all  men — the  union  miner  protest- 
ing his  low  wage  and  the  coal  employer  with  his  side 
of  production  and  just  profit;  the  steel  workingman 
protesting  his  grievances  and  the  employer  his  right 
to  direct  his  own  business  or  the  business  of  his 
corporation;  the  union  man  on  the  job  and  the  non- 
union man's  right  to  go  on  any  job;  and  the  con- 
tractor's right  to  efficiency  and  an  honest  day's  labor. 
We  find  no  unfair  spirit  toward  the  unions,  nor 
desire  to  use  law  to  destroy  them.  Arbitration 
makes  no  pronouncement  against  the  right  of  men 
to  organize,  but  it  proposes  to  examine  the  purposes 
of  an  organization  and  the  uses  which  are  being 
made  of  it.  It  will  not  say  that  a  man  shall  not  quit 
a  job  when  he  pleases.  That  is  as  much  his  right  as 
it  is  for  him  to  begin  to  work  when  hired.  It  is  an 
inalienable  right  deeper  than  statutes.  But  it  will 
inquire  as  to  why  the  employer  may  not  decide  when 
his  services  are  no  longer  wanted,  and  also  as  to 
whether  the  act  of  his  dismissal  is  arbitrary  and  un- 
just, as  has  often  happened  by  the  act  of  some  unfit 
boss  or  foreman.  Arbitration  will  hear  and  settle 
protests  of  a  whole  body  of  men  which  heretofore 
has  resorted  to  strikes  endangering  life  and  property 
and  costing  our  country  untold  millions  of  money  in 
wages  and  products.  Such  disputes  are  now  settled 

298 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

by  a  test  of  endurance  and  the  greater  loss  and  em- 
barrassment which  can  be  inflicted.  That  always  is 
attended  by  deep  resentment  and  it  displaces  calm 
judgment  and  the  capability  of  seeing  the  other's 
cause.  Men  never  have  been  capable  of  settling 
personal  controversy  when  anger  and  passionate 
strife  enter  into  the  contention.  The  attempt  often 
has  resulted  in  life  enmity  or  in  revenge  by  incendiar- 
ism and  murder — the  very  principles  of  the  strike. 
Such  a  condition  should  not  be  allowed  as  a  right 
and  privilege  by  American  citizens.  It  strikes  at 
the  whole  public  and  is  a  menace  to  any  community 
when  it  is  permitted.  The  law  of  arbitration  should 
not  be  used  in  the  case  of  labor  unions  only,  but  it 
should  be  a  general  law  to  take  the  place  of  all 
strikes  of  every  kind. 

Those  who  object  to  the  present  form  of  the 
labor  union  simply  insist  that  it  shall  come  under  law, 
and  that  its  acts  shall  be  altogether  lawful,  and  that 
it  shall  use  nothing  against  the  nonunion  man  nor 
business  which  is  not  lawful;  that  its  leaders  shall 
respect  our  laws  and  obey  them  and  not  oppose 
them  nor  defy  them.  We  insist  that  the  union 
shall  be  ruled,  not  by  an  oligarchy  of  aliens,  but  that 
they  shall  be  ruled  by  the  United  States. 

A  New  Year's  letter  of  Samuel  Gompers  shows 
how  blinded  a  man  may  become  by  the  persistent 
pursuit  of  violated  law  and  privilege.  He  says  that 
"American  workers  stand  ready  to  do  their  full 
duty  as  American  citizens."  Mr.  Gompers  is  speak- 

299 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ing  for  a  minority  of  American  workers.  He  is  not 
representing  the  nonunion  workers.  And  Mr. 
Gompers  has  forgotten  that  it  is  not  a  month  since 
he  said  that  if  the  government  passed  certain  laws — 
and  it  doubtless  will  pass  them — he  "would  not  obey 
them."  Mr.  Gompers  said  in  his  letter,  "As  citi- 
zens, we  are  true  to  the  American  ideal  of  equal  op- 
portunity for  all."  Does  that  mean  the  nonunion 
man?  Is  he  one  of  the  "all"?  Or  are  the  union 
men  the  "all"  who  shall  enjoy  equal  opportunity  of 
labor?  Mr.  Gompers  tells  us  in  his  letter  he  "has 
found  it  necessary  to  fight  agencies  that  sought  to 
establish  special  privileges" !  "Those  fights  have 
been  to  assure  to  wage-earners  the  rights  and  oppor- 
tunities that  all  should  possess."  Have  the  fights 
been  for  all  laborers,  or  only  for  union  men's  "spe- 
cial privileges"  ?  This  champion  of  human  freedom 
— when  it  is  union  organized — tells  us  further  that 
"the  great  struggle  has  been  to  assure  workers  in 
their  industrial  relations  the  rights  of  free  citizens." 
That  is  a  narrow  concept  of  American  freedom. 
Ours  is  a  freedom  which  contemplates  every  citizen 
who  obeys  the  law,  both  union  and  nonunion,  laborer 
and  capitalist.  And  any  militant  struggle  against 
any  of  our  citizens  to  secure  benefits  to  other  citi- 
zens is  against  the  law  and  should  be  forbidden. 
No  man  has  any  right  to  lead  in  any  such  contest. 
That  leaves  him  to  be  the  legislator,  the  court,  the 
executive  and  the  militant  commander,  all  of  which 
Mr.  Gompers  has  long  assumed  to  be !  I  make  one 

300 


MY  NEIGHBOR  HAS  A  JUST  REMEDY 

more  quotation  from  the  famous  New  Year's  greet- 
ing, which  contains  more  fallacies  than  I  ever  saw  in 
five  paragraphs:  "The  immediate  problem  of  the 
world  is  to  develop  a  production  organization  that 
will  benefit  directly  those  who  are  the  real  producers 
and  serve  the  needs  of  starving  nations/'  Why  an 
organization,  why  not  all  men?  "The  real  produc- 
ers" are  the  men  who  put  their  money  into  factories 
and  shops  and  machines,  and  who  hire  men  and 
women  to  "develop  production."  These  are  the 
real  producers — the  man  with  the  money;  the  man 
with  his  day  labor  for  which  he  is  paid.  The  man 
with  the  money  and  business  sagacity  and  risk  of 
loss  must  be  paid  out  of  the  profits.  He  consents 
to  pay  the  workingman  first. 


301 


CHAPTER  XV 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

THERE  are  at  least  two  distinct  responsibilities 
where  two  men  or  two  kinds  of  employments  meet. 
There  is  one  humanity,  and  one  Golden  Rule,  always 
as  fundamental  obligations,  and  nothing  exempts  nor 
removes  them.  But  the  laborer  cannot  displace  the 
employer,  nor  can  the  employer  take  the  place  of 
the  laborer  except  where  the  work  of  both  can  be 
done  by  the  same  person.  Collective  bargaining  is 
a  loosely  jointed  formula  if  applied  only  to  the  inter- 
ests of  one  side  of  a  controversy  which  uses  it  and  at 
once  gets  into  trouble  with  the  side  which  it  opposes 
and  attempts  to  control.  It  is  not  a  happy  phrase, 
and  has  made  no  small  mischief.  The  employer  has 
the  initiative  and  represents  the  housing,  the  ma- 
chines, and  the  material  to  pass  into  products.  The 
workman  also  comes  into  his  purview  in  a  large  way. 
The  laborer  has  his  skill,  his  brawn,  his  health,  the 
sustenance  and  comfort  of  himself  and  family,  the 
savings  against  the  rainy  day,  and  the  social  and 
religious  life,  and  the  civil  and  domestic  economy 
of  his  town,  all  as  problems  of  his  employment. 
These  must  all  be  considered  when  he  takes  up  the 
question  of  where  and  for  whom  he  shall  work. 
The  workingman  must  settle  these  propositions  care- 

302 


i 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

fully.  It  is  not  simply  a  question  of  the  ability  of 
the  employer  to  pay,  but  of  all  the  conditions  that 
insure  permanent  and  safe  employment.  It  is  un- 
wise to  leave  these  matters  to  be  settled  afterward 
by  collective  bargaining.  A  disinclination  to  work 
under  given  conditions  is  a  strong  corrective  of  care- 
less employers.  It  is  rather  late  in  the  world's 
istory  for  the  laborer's  time  to  be  spent  upon  cor- 
ecting  wrong  appointments  of  factories,  such  as 
bad  sanitation,  heat  and  light,  or  readjustment  of 
wage.  A  direct  pressure  is  in  the  silent,  unprotest- 
ing  absence  from  that  plant  of  efficient  workers. 
The  same  privilege  is  reserved  to  the  employer 
quietly  to  exclude  the  inefficient  from  his  shops.  This 
is  all  the  right  which  is  established  by  themselves  be- 
tween the  employer  and  the  employee.  It  is  sub- 
ject to  withdrawal  of  either  or  of  both. 

A  laborer  cannot  take  out  of  his  employer's  busi- 
ness more  than  is  in  it,  and  when  he  takes  out  his 
weekly  wage  he  leaves  in  that  business  the  risk  of 
loss  and  the  depreciation  which  his  discontent  and 
insistence  upon  larger  pay  creates.  All  turns  upon 
what  the  business  is  making.  It  has  no  other  source 
of  revenue.  It  cannot  anticipate  nor  draw  back 
from  the  reserve  of  past  years.  What  is  the  pro- 
duct by  the  workers  and  what  the  demand  for  that 
product?  Every  laborer  has  a  very  direct  and  con- 
tract relation  to  the  market,  and  it  is  not  possible  to 
read  the  market  offhand.  That  is  the  problem  for 
the  employer.  It  is  his  job.  The  workingman  is 

303 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

really  employed  by  the  market.  What  does  the 
world  want?  It  would  be  foolish  to  work  on  shoes 
if  there  were  no  demand  for  shoes,  or  on  clothes  if 
there  were  no  demand  for  woolens  nor  dress  goods. 
Upon  my  neighbor  the  workingman  is  placed  as 
much  as  upon  the  employer  the  products  demanded 
by  mankind.  If  they  are  not  produced  and  men 
want  them,  the  prices  become  prohibitive.  If  they 
are  produced,  they  sometimes  become  a  drug  in  the 
market.  The  workingman  sometimes  appears  to 
think  that  business  is  made  arbitrarily;  and  if  it  is 
not  made,  it  ought  to  be  taken  over  by  someone  who 
can  produce  it  and  make  it  pay  wages.  It  is  true 
that  sometimes  faulty  methods  of  distribution  and 
sales  have  to  be  corrected,  for  the  fault  is  not  with 
overproduction  but  with  under  sales  and  bad  man- 
agement. But  it  remains  just  the  same  problem  of 
taking  out  only  what  is  put  into  the  business  by  the 
employer  and  the  employee,  and  the  world  has  the 
determination  of  all  that.  Every  workingman  is 
working  for  the  public,  and  he  has  more  than  he  may 
imagine  the  making  of  the  public  demands.  The 
present  conditions  of  limited  production  and  high 
prices  have  been  brought  about  very  largely  by  short- 
ened hours  and  repeated  increase  of  wages.  It  may 
not  -have  been  too  much  wage — that  is  for  the  public 
to  say — for  it  becomes  a  question  as  to  whether  the 
people  can  afford  it,  and  the  public  is  not  something 
apart  from  the  wage-earners.  They  are  foolish  if 
they  think  that  they  are  receiving  something  from 

304 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

capital  and  from  those  who  can  afford  to  pay.     The 
laborer  must  help  pay  the  tax  of  the  high  cost  of 
living  which  he  creates.     If  as  the  result     of  his 
short  hours  and  high  pay  it  costs  more  to  build  in  a 
community,  he  must  pay  more  to  build  his  cottage. 
Material  is  forced  up  and  he  must  take  a  per  cent 
it  of  his  pay  envelope  to  buy  this  material.     If 
rages  are  doubled  on  the  farm,  as  they  have  been, 
ie  must  pay  more  for  milk  and  potatoes  and  eggs 
ind  poultry,   for  it  costs  more  to  raise  grain  and 
vegetables  and  corn  for  stock.     When  the  city  work- 
igman  doubles  his  pay  he  at  once  doubles  the  pay 
>f  the  farm  hand  and  becomes  a  purchaser  of  farm 
>roduce  as  one  of  the  public,  at  an  increased  price. 
[e  cannot  escape.     The  folly  of  the  Bojsheviki  is 
iat  they  imagine  that  they  are  a  separate  class  and 
take  a  new  economic  law.     The  old  law  remains, 
'ake  out  the  labor  and  you  take  out  the  product; 
icrease  the  pay  of  labor  and  you  add  to  the  price  of 
product.     You  can  keep  it  going  until  it  becomes 
irohibitive.     The    manufacturer    goes    no    further 
than  the  demand  goes,  and  the  demand  stops  when 
the  people  cannot  afford  the  article.  They  will  substi- 
tute something  less  expensive,  or  do  without  it  when 
possible.     It  is  plain  enough,  therefore,  in  the  final 
analysis,  that  the  workingman's  employer  is  the  pub- 
lic and  that  he  is  a  part  of  the  public.     Public  spirit 
becomes  a  self-protective  spirit.    What  promotes  the 
public  good  and  offers  attractions  to  business  is  of 
first  and  most  direct  concern  to  the  man  who  works 

305 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

with  his  hands.  Every  store  and  every  shop  depends 
upon  the  ability  of  men  and  women  in  the  town  to 
buy.  This  is  what  makes  prosperous  labor  condi- 
tions. It  is  not  something  arbitrary  for  which  capi- 
talists and  employers  are  responsible.  It  is  a  law  of 
cause  and  effect,  as  certain  and  dependable  as  the 
law  which  governs  the  tides  of  the  sea  or  the  move- 
ments of  the  stars.  Men  may  disregard  it,  but  they 
will  find  that  its  court  is  always  in  session,  and  its 
penalties  are  sure.  There  are  no  suspended  sen- 
tences. What  is  done  has  its  sequences,  and  they 
will  be  of  its  kind  and  time.  What  men  do  in  labor 
has  far  and  exact  consequences. 

Intelligent  employers,  feeling  the  force  of  this, 
have  tried  every  expedient  to  conserve  labor  and 
secure  to  it  contentment  with  an  adequate  wage.  One 
of  the  experiments  has  been  profit-sharing.  In  this 
way  it  has  been  thought  that  the  workingman  could 
be  made  to  feel  a  responsibility  for  the  business,  and 
work  as  a  silent  partner.  The  theory  contains  a  high 
ideal,  but  it  is  based  upon  a  presumption  which  does 
not  obtain  among  workingmen.  Such  a  scheme  can- 
not be  made  practical  with  exceptions.  It  must  be 
general.  It  must  comprehend  the  whole  crew,  the 
entire  body  of  laborers. 

The  two  fields  of  business  management  and 
labor  efficiency  are  widely  different.  The  laborer 
is  not  patient  of  the  slower  processes.  If  the  busi- 
ness can  pay  a  profit  at  the  end  of  a  year,  it  must  pay 
me  increased  wage,  or  I  go,  he  says.  And  if  I  am 

306 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

to  share  in  profits,  am  I  not  to  share  in  losses  ?  That 
I  cannot  afford  on  my  income.  I  cannot  wait  for 
the  profits  of  one  year  with  another  to  balance  the 
account  in  making  the  totals.  The  plan  has  not 
contributed  essential  harmony  and  become  general 
in  the  businesses  of  the  country  and  we  believe  never 

Kill  be.  There  are  instances  where  enthusiastic 
aims  are  set  up  for  the  plan,  but  they  are  in  cases 
here  conditions  are  exceptional,  such  as  skilled 
manufacture  which  eliminates  hand  labor  largely 
and  takes  in  a  form  of  skilled  artisanship.  In  one 
of  these  great  establishments  where  the  plan  has 
been  in  operation  for  a  long  time  it  is  admitted  by 
the  management  that  a  large  per  cent  of  the  em- 
ployees are  college  graduates.  This  shows  an  ex- 
ceptional condition  which  would  furnish  no  guide  to 
ordinary  forms  of  labor.  Workingmen  are  not 
college  educated.  They  are  not  technically  educated. 
Many  of  them  are  highly  intelligent  and  proficient 
in  their  chosen  calling.  The  firm  to  which  I  have 
referred  is  employing  more  than  workingmen.  The 
men  who  go  to  work  there  are  putting  in  something 
more  than  hand  labor.  They  are  putting  in  that 
which  cost  them  thousands  of  dollars  in  money  and 
in  preparatory  time,  and  they  should  expect  and 
have  more  than  weekly  wages. 

A  plan  which  might  apply  to  such  quality  of  work 
would  be  difficult  to  adjust  to  manual  labor  strictly 
and  exclusively.  Men  should  take  away  what  they 
bring  to  the  job,  and  no  more.  That  would  be  for 

307 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

the  workingman  what  his  labor  is  worth  in  the 
market  of  workers.  His  employer  represents  other 
values — intellectual  capacity,  influence  and  confi- 
dence among  owners,  power  to  employ  and  to  secure 
from  workingmen  their  money  value  in  the  products 
of  labor.  He  is  the  man  who  went  out  and  found 
the  contract  and  began  to  work  for  a  profit  after 
reckoning  material  and  labor.  He  is  the  man  who 
gave  his  bond  and  ventured  all  his  savings.  The 
workingmen  did  not  do  it.  They  could  not  take  a 
contract.  They  could  work  on  it  and  nothing  more. 

There  is  something  due  the  employer,  therefore, 
something  more  than  four  dollars  of  work  value,  the 
price  of  a  day's  work.  The  laborer  owes  a  certain 
value  in  dependableness.  A  contract  is  made  to 
deliver  a  building  in  a  certain  time,  or  to  pay  a  for- 
feit. There  is  a  contract,  actual  or  implied,  with 
carpenters  and  masons,  tenders  and  handy  men. 
These  men  are  in  honor  bound  to  their  employer  if 
he  is  to  them.  If  they  are  not  to  be,  he  cannot 
begin  a  contract.  The  man  who  furnishes  lumber, 
the  hardware  man,  the  cement  man,  cannot  put  up 
prices  from  week  to  week  arbitrarily  without  regard 
to  agreed  contracts. 

Collective  bargaining  is  not  bargaining.  It  is  all 
one-sided  if  it  may  be  set  aside  and  ignored  when- 
ever a  union  decides  to  insist  upon  higher  wages. 
"Collective"  means  more  than  one  party.  It  is  as 
much  in  the  interest  of  the  workingman  as  it  is  to 
the  interest  of  the  employer  that  there  be  stable 

308 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

conditions,  and  the  compelling  force  should  be  the 
stability  of  employment.  It  goes  without  saying 
that  the  man  coming  to  a  job  must  bring  two  hands 
and  two  feet,  and  that  he  must  have  common  intel- 
ligence if  he  is  to  assert  any  claim  upon  the  em- 
ployer. But  it  should  be  equally  true  that  he  must 
bring  sobriety  and  common  honesty.  He  must  keep 
his  contract  with  his  employer.  The  employer  hires 
a  contented  man.  He  is  there  presumably  because 
he  wants  to  be.  He  would  rather  be  there  than  in 
any  other  place.  He  need  not  have  come  if  he  did 
not  like  the  wage.  He  is  a  dishonest  man  who  takes 
advantage  of  a  place  on  a  contract  job  to  sow  dis- 
content among  his  fellow  workmen  and,  if  possible, 
disrupt  the  crew.  The  agitator  often  begins  this 
way.  Most  of  the  strikes  begin  by  betrayal  of  the 
employer.  The  collective  bargaining  is  not  with  the 
employer,  but  against  the  employer.  The  peculiar 
state  of  mind  of  the  labor  agitator  has  been  il- 
lustrated in  recent  pronouncement  of  the  federation 
against  government  meddling  with  labor  unions.  It 
brings  out  fully  the  perverted  thought  of  independ- 
ence of  employer,  of  the  public,  and  of  the  consti- 
tuted authority  of  the  land  upon  the  part  of  the 
labor  unions.  The  avowed  claim  is  made  that  they 
are  free  men!  Free  men  to  dictate  prudence  on 
their  own  terms  and  to  deny  it  to  whom  they  will. 
A  recent  utterance  charges  the  government  with  en- 
croaching upon  the  rights  of  workers !  What  work- 
ers? The  nonunion  workers?  Another  outcry  is 

309 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

that  it  is  "time  to  call  a  halt  upon  oppression  of 
workers  by  the  courts."  Why  is  it  worse  for  the 
courts  to  oppress  workers  than  it  is  for  workers  to 
oppress  workers?  Have  not  union  workers  been 
oppressing  nonunion  workers  for  a  full  generation? 
Are  such  men  likely  to  be  heard  or  heeded  when 
they  whimper  about  the  oppression  of  the  courts 
which  are  restraining  them  from  oppressing  the 
whole  country  with  their  immoral  and  criminal 
strikes  ? 

Again  the  federation  council  speaks:  "Men  born 
free  will  not  long  suffer  tyranny  or  deprivation  of 
natural  liberty  in  whatever  form,  without  de- 
termined resistance."  That  is  a  pronouncement 
which  we  have  long  waited  from  union  authority. 
Men  born  free,  without  restraint  of  a  self-consti- 
tuted authority,  have  a  right  to  work  where  and  for 
whom  they  choose  for  their  own  agreed  wage,  and 
no  man  has  a  right  to  interfere  with  them.  If  he 
does,  he  will  be  met  with  determined  resistance ! 

The  convention  which  so  vehemently  resists  court 
injunctions  applied  to  union  strikes  and  never  resents 
injunctions  against  corporations,  declares  that: 
"Treason  should  be  defined  to  include  willful  viola- 
tion by  any  public  official  of  any  constitutional  right 
of  a  citizen."  Why  by  an  official  of  the  government 
any  more  than  by  an  official  of  the  federated  unions ! 
If  anything  is  made  to  appear  it  is  that  the  time- 
honored  injunction,  which  is  one  of  the  most  com- 
mon forms  of  restraining  government  in  all  enlight- 

310 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

ened  lands,  has  been  delayed  in  this  land  altogether 
too  long.  Why  should  a  body  of  men  under  any 
pretense  or  claim  be  permitted  to  violate  any  consti- 
tutional right  of  any  citizen?  and  why  should  such 
violators  defy  the  restraints  of  the  government 
which  keeps  them  simply  within  their  lawful  bounds 
and  protects  individual  and  public  interests  from  the 
oppression  of  their  tyranny? 

At  last  the  government  has  come  in  as  an  em- 
ployer. It  has  too  long  left  the  oppressed  indi- 
vidual worker  to  fight  his  unequal  battle.  But  when 
the  government  came  to  run  railways  and  to  appre- 
ciate that  the  railways  must  have  coal,  it  appreciated 
what  it  was  to  be  an  employer.  And  when  the 
union  took  Uncle  Sam  for  an  employer  and  at- 
tempted to  run  its  strikes,  it  ran  against  what  has 
;en  used  against  defiant  offenders  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  government.  It  is  profoundly  to  be 
hoped  that  the  same  law  will  enforce  the  right  of 
the  individual  and  the  entire  public  whenever  a  con- 
spiracy by  tyrants  attempts  to  oppress  the  people  or 
even  one  of  the  people. 

Mr.  Lincoln  said  that  we  could  not  remain  half 
free  and  half  slave.  That  is  our  condition  in  labor 
now;  one  half  free  to  work  as  it  pleases  and  to  dic- 
tate terms  to  employers  and  contend  against  law, 
and  the  other  half  slaves  to  the  first  half  to  work 
only  when  permitted  and  to  be  hunted  and  hounded 
about  from  job  to  job  and  forbidden  to  work  en- 
tirely, if  possible.  The  two  cannot  remain  in  this 

311 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

divided  way,  and  the  whole  must  be  altogether 
free. 

No  body  of  men  have  any  corporate  or  associated 
right  in  our  country  to  become  inimical  to  any  public 
interest  or  to  the  perfect  freedom  of  any  person  or 
any  other  body  of  our  citizens  protected  in  their 
rights  under  our  Constitution.  That  men  may  re- 
fuse to  work  for  any  employer  under  any  conditions 
which  they  may  set  up,  no  one  will  deny.  If  their 
patriotism  falls  so  low  and  their  self-interest  so  far 
disregards  the  Golden  Rule,  they  can,  of  course, 
retire  within  themselves  as  a  mud  turtle  pulls  its 
head  into  its  shell.  But  they  cannot,  in  free 
America,  deny  the  rights  of  other  men  to  enjoy  the 
privileges  which  they  claim  for  themselves.  We 
cannot  insist  upon  this  too  often  nor  urge  it  too 
earnestly. 

Labor  is  not  simply  for  wages.  It  is  not  only  to 
sustain  the  life  of  the  laborer  and  his  family;  it  is  to 
enter  into  the  improvement  and  development  of  the 
country  and  to  add  to  the  advantages  in  the  future  of 
himself  and  his  associates.  It  is  a  short-sighted 
mistake  to  think  that  the  results  of  labor  are  carried 
away  by  the  man  who  pays  the  wage.  It  is  only  the 
gambler  who  carries  away  what  he  gets  and  leaves 
nothing.  What  the  workingman  builds  remains — a 
road,  a  dwelling,  a  commercial  or  an  educational 
building.  If  a  factory,  it  adds  more  business;  if  a 
dam,  it  supplies  water  power;  if  an  electric  plant,  it 
furnishes  light.  A  man  pointed  to  a  great  structure, 

312 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

the  pride  of  his  city,  and  said,  "I  helped  build  that." 
He  felt  that  by  so  much  he  was  a  public  benefactor. 
Mechanics  have  often  said  to  me,  "I  worked  on 
your  great  buildings  of  the  University  up  on  the 
Hill."  They  had  just  pride  in  their  work  and  I 
always  met  them  afterward  with  a  different  interest. 
They  seemed  to  me  to  have  had  an  important  part 
with  our  patrons  in  making  possible  the  presence  of 
thousands  of  students  in  the  University  halls.  They 
'ere  in  a  way  founders  of  the  institution.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  the  community  looks  upon  its  honest 
and  efficient  workingmen.  It  has  pride  in  them. 

The   calamity  which  has   fallen  upon  American 
labor  is  the  separation  between  the  workingman  and 
the  employer.     It  has  been  brought  about  by  an  or- 
ganization which  has  been  taught  that  the  employer 
is  seeking  to  rob  the  laborer  of  his  hire,  that  he  cares 
only  for  what  he  can  get  out  of  his  contract,  and 
"his  results  in  a  defensive  feeling  upon  the  part  of 
ic  employer  and  you  have  two  men  of  the  same 
lesh  and  blood,  whose  interests  should  be  common, 
in    sharp    antagonism.     The   builders'    associations 
ind  the  labor  unions  are  playing  points  upon  each 
>ther  when  they  should  be  promoting  each  other's 
interests,  because  they  have  a  common  cause.     The 
!ailure  of  either  hurts  both.     They  should  be   so 
identical  that  the  thinnest  wedge  of  the  agitator  could 
lot   be   inserted   between    them.     No   man    should 
stand  between  the  men  and  their  employer.     The 
man    who    does    always    makes    mischief.     He    is 

313 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

preaching  discontent,  and  it  does  not  stop  with 
wages.  It  reaches  out  into  the  business.  It  attacks 
the  conditions  of  society  and  begins  propaganda  of  a 
new  economic  and  social  order.  It  attacks  the  church 
and  the  nation,  and  you  see  a  caste  created,  and  the 
workingman,  for  the  first  time,  comes  to  believe 
that  he  is  oppressed  and  that  courts  are  a  tyranny 
and  that  the  government  ought  to  be  overthrown. 
The  curse  of  the  workingman  is  the  man  whom  he 
has  let  in  between  him  and  his  employer,  the  mischief 
meddler  whom  he  has  let  in  to  set  up  his  notions 
from  collective  bargaining  to  strikes.  The  country 
has  paid  nearly  three  hundred  millions  for  the 
meddlers'  steel  strike  besides  millions  of  lost  wages 
of  men  who  were  being  paid  more  wages  than  college 
professors  and  preachers  were  receiving.  There 
have  been  no  differences  between  intelligent  workers 
and  their  employers  which  would  not  have  been 
settled  if  they  had  been  left  to  the  workers  and  the 
employers.  No  one  will  contend  that  the  employer 
has  always  been  just,  and  it  is  equally  true  that  the 
worker  has  not  been  faultless.  Often  he  was  drunk 
on  the  job;  and,  if  not,  he  often  was  surly  and  quar- 
relsome, or  shiftless  and  lazy.  There  were  two 
sides. 

As  a  rule,  the  employer  is  the  workingman' s  best 
friend.  The  go-between  is  not  an  altruist  and  an 
unselfish  friend  of  the  laborer.  In  nearly  every  in- 
stance he  was  a  malcontent  and  in  some  conspicuous 
cases  had  served  his  country  behind  grated  windows. 

314 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

Their  taste  of  the  law  was  so  bitter  that  they  never 
have  liked  the  taste  of  it  since,  as  is  shown  by  their 
references  to  it  even  under  the  restraint  of  prudence. 
Such  men  offer  their  services  to  the  unions  only  when 
and  because  they  find  it  possible  to  arouse  discontent. 
They  complain  of  employers,  whom  they  call  capital- 
ists, and  secure  a  following  by  flattering  the  work- 
ingman  by  preaching  the  doctrine  that  were  he  given 
what  belongs  to  him  he  would  have  what  the  rich 
have,  and  the  rich  would  have  nothing.  The 
meddler  makes  it  appear  that  if  the  laborers  will 
organize  and  assess  a  moderate  fee  and  meet  the 
expense,  legislation  can  be  influenced  and  the  em- 
>loyer  can  be  forced  to  pay  a  large  wage  and  the 
workingman  will  control  the  situation.  If  you  will 
study  the  situation,  you  will  find  that  here  is  where 
"he  laborer  and  the  employer  got  into  cross-purposes 
and  the  labor  chiefs  have  found  their  fat  pickings, 
'hey  live  on  the  fat  of  the  land  whichever  way  the 
fight  goes.  The  employer  is  represented  as  an  agent 
of  the  plutocrat,  and  human  society  and  human  gov- 
ernment are  grinding  the  toilers  and  forcing  upon 
them  poverty.  The  agitators  claim  to  be  the  only 
unselfish  friends  of  the  workingman.  The  only  test 
of  this  would  be  to  withhold  the  fat  salaries  of  the 
chiefs  and  the  pay  of  the  loafing  walking  delegates. 
It  would  be  interesting  to  uncover  the  startling  loss 
to  the  workingman  by  the  agitators'  strikes  in  a 
period  of  twenty-five  or  thirty  years.  It  amounts  to 
billions  of  dollars. 

315 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

The  employer  to-day  has  to  figure  every  contract 
by  putting  the  corps  of  labor  officials  and  agitators 
into  it.  If  he  had  to  reckon  only  with  his  workmen, 
he  would  be  surer  of  his  profit,  the  men  of  their 
wage,  and  there  would  be  more  jobs.  It  is  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  of  the  working- 
man's  wages  that  are  going  into  the  high  living  and 
high  travel  of  a  useless  corps  of  mischief  makers, 
men  who  have  done  more  to  hinder  and  embarrass 
labor  than  all  the  other  obstacles  combined  with 
which  it  has  had  to  contend.  Clear  out  the  whole 
crowd.  Use  the  union  for  mutual  improvement  and 
social  entertainment  on  the  plan  of  mutual  benefits, 
as  the  Masons  and  Odd  Fellows  use  their  lodges, 
and  keep  the  fees  within  the  town  where  they  are 
earned,  for  the  health  insurance  of  the  members, 
greet  every  workingman  as  a  neighbor  and  friend, 
and  talk  face  to  face  with  the  employer  and  not  be- 
hind his  back  in  a  union,  about  him,  and  in  a  decade 
the  improved  conditions  of  labor  and  capital  will 
astonish  the  world. 

It  is  a  prodigious  mistake  for  the  workingmen  to 
withdraw  themselves  from  their  employer  and  from 
the  public  and  make  a  class  of  themselves.  It  is, 
on  the  face  of  it,  a  confession  of  inferiority,  like  a 
body  of  men  who  cannot  stand  upon  their  own  merit 
but  must  stand  in  a  threatening  attitude,  squared  to 
fight.  Strong  men  do  not  do  that.  That  is  some- 
thing inculcated  by  an  alien  interpretation  of  our 
liberties  and  the  defense  of  our  rights.  For  a  gen- 

316 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  EMPLOYER 

eration  the  unfortunate  leadership  of  union  labor 
has  been  putting  our  sturdy,  rugged  citizens  into  a 
belligerent  mood.     Such  leadership  is  absolutely  an 
unmitigated    curse    to    this    free    land.     Americans 
should  never  consent  to  be  led  by  such  alien  leader- 
ship.    It  is  unsound  and  unsafe.     It  does  not  con- 
fine itself  to  bettering  the  conditions  of  workingmen. 
[t  is  a  political  propaganda.     To  hold  its  place  it 
mst  constantly  agitate.     We  shall  have  no  peace 
tor  established  order  until  the  misguided  victims  of 
icse  insinuating  meddlers  arise  to  the  dignity  and 
>atriotism  of  American  citizens.  They  are  not  serfs, 
'hey  are  not  oppressed.  They  are  not  downtrodden, 
'he  employers  are  on  equal  terms  of  citizenship  with 
them  and  the  law  makes  no  difference  between  them, 
'he  rich  build  hospitals  and  schools,  not  for  them- 
;lves,  but  equally  for  the  poor.  There  is  no  favored 
lass,  unless  it  is  the  man  who  finds  it  in  a  land  where 
ic  can  use  his  opportunity  with  what  he  has.     The 
>anks  are  not  hoarding  the  money  of  the  rich,  but 
>rotecting  the  money  of  the  workingman  also.     It 
a  crime,  a  treasonable  crime,  for  any  man  to  seek 
to  excite  envy,  discontent,  and  a  class  spirit  in  our 
jlorious  republic,  which  offers  opportunity  to  every 
lan  up  to  the  measure  of  his  ability  to  use  it.     It  is 
tot  our  crime.     It  is  an  imported  crime.     It  is  not 
idigenous.     It  finds  a  foothold  here  only  because 
>f  our  mixed  and  cross-bred  and  un-American  con- 
litions.     It  does  not  thrive  with  Americanism. 


317 


CHAPTER  XVI 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

SEVERE  criticisms  are  not  always  aimed  at  men, 
but  oftener  at  measures.  If  the  labor  union  has 
fallen  into  disfavor,  those  who  condemn  it  are  not 
seeking  to  destroy  it,  but  to  correct  it  and  make  it 
serve  both  its  members  and  the  country.  Any 
privilege  claimed  by  any  body  of  men  must  not  only 
be  based  upon  what  it  is  to  do  for  those  who  claim 
it,  but  as  much  upon  its  service  to  all  men.  If  it 
helps  those  who  use  it  and  injures  any  others  who 
are  outside  its  membership,  the  case  against  it  is 
plain  enough.  A  widely  extended  sentiment  has 
been  created  against  the  order  by  labor  unionists  and 
especially  by  those  who  use  it  against  the  liberty  of 
other  men.  It  is  not  a  prejudice.  It  is  a  conviction 
forced  by  the  effect  of  the  union  upon  business  and 
upon  labor.  If  it  is  claimed  that  its  object  is  to 
promote  the  interests  of  the  workingman,  we  are 
met  by  the  fact  that  it  seeks  the  good  of  only  a  small 
per  cent  of  the  laborers.  More  than  four  times  its 
membership  it  opposes.  It  is  not  an  answer  that 
these  might  join  the  union.  They  have  a  right  to 
determine  that  question  themselves.  They  demand 
the  liberty  of  private  and  personal  judgment.  That 
is  more  important  than  all  other  considerations. 

318 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

That  is  where  manhood  differentiates  and  its  free- 
dom begins.     In  this  country  that  is  the  first  ques- 
tion asked.     Men  are  justly  and  fortunately  sensi- 
tive  upon    matters    of    their   personal    choice    and 
liberty.     The  objections  to  the  union  are  not  from 
the   politician   with   low   and   small   ambitions   and 
personal  ends  to  serve.     It  is  a  plain  case  of  judging 
by  the  fruits  which  are  borne  on  the  tree.     If  a  dif- 
ferent quality  of  fruit  suited  to  all  is  grafted  into 
that  tree,  there  will  be  no  longer  contention  and 
opposition.     The  unionists  cannot  begin  too  soon 
that  process  of  engrafting.     If  I  have  a  religion,  it 
ust  be  for  everybody.     If  I  have  politics,  it  must 
e  for  the  whole  country.     If  I  have  a  business,  it 
ust  oppose  no  other  business  except  by  fair  com- 
etition.     If  I  have  a  union,  it  must  injure  no  one. 
hat  is  the  test.     It  is  twofold:  it  must  do  no  harm 
nd  it  should  do  good.     In  any  event  it  must  do  no 
arm  to  anyone.    It  must  proceed  upon  the  principle 
f  equal  rights  to  all  men.     It  will  not  answer  ob- 
ections  to  say  that  selfish  men  want  to  destroy  my 
rganization  because  it  protects  me  from  their  un- 
ust  and  cruel  designs.     While  I  am  protecting  my- 
If  what  am  I  doing  to  others? 
The  opponents  of  the  union  as  it  has  come  to  be 
re  the  best  friends  of  the  union  workingman.    They 
re  championing  the  rights  of  the  nonunion  man. 
t  is  not  a  spirit  of  anger  and  blind  prejudice,  it  is  a 
irit  of  loyalty  to  all  men.     The  worst  enemy  of 
e  union  workingman  is  the  leader  or  controlling 
319 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

member  who  urges  the  thought  that  the  criticisms 
against  their  organization  are  by  men  who  wish  to 
destroy  it.  That  covers  defects  which  ought  to  be 
seen  and  corrected.  The  American  spirit  in  the 
union  should  have  founded  it  upon  the  constitution 
of  our  country  and  prevented  those  things  which 
have  been  harmful  and  destructive.  The  union 
should  look  within  itself  for  its  foes.  They  are 
alien  to  American  institutions.  They  are  men  who 
have  never  come  in  sympathetic  touch  with  our 
fundamentals  of  government.  It  is  a  strange  and 
startling  thing  that  the  American  republic  is  a 
failure,  and  that  our  workingmen  are  to  unlearn  its 
lessons  and  substitute  for  the  courts  and  executives, 
and  lawful  good  order,  strikes,  sabotage,  and  per- 
sonal abuse  and  riot.  It  is  a  startling  voice  which 
we  hear  declaiming  against  the  injunction  of  con- 
spiracy and  in  threats  of  revolution  by  violence 
against  a  government  which  for  one  hundred  and 
forty  years  has  stood  firmly  upon  defense  of  all 
oppressed  both  rich  and  poor.  It  is  a  strange  new 
plan  of  government  which  is  coming  to  use  govern- 
ment for  the  few  and  to  overthrow  by  violence  the 
many  who  oppose  the  riotous  few.  Our  union 
friends  who  think  we  are  their  enemies  will  do  well 
to  inquire  where  their  friendship  is  going  and  if 
their  country  may  not  be  greater  than  their  union. 
Do  they  consider  what  it  means  to  take  for  their 
guides  and  champions  men  who  are  enemies  of  their 
country,  men  in  some  cases  who  have  faced  the 

320 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

charge  of  personal  crime  and  have  looked  out 
through  prison  bars  for  conspiracy  against  the  freest 
land  on  the  earth?  These  are  not  friends.  They 
are  enemies.  "Faithful  are  the  wounds  of  a  friend." 
The  deceivers  who  have  posed  for  years  as  the 
champions  of  labor  persist  in  the  slanderous  lies 
that  men  who  furnish  money  to  make  jobs  possible 
and  the  employers  who  select  workingmen  for  the 
jobs  and  all  who  oppose  the  fatal  principles  of  the 
unions  are  all  enemies  of  the  laboring  man.  So  far 
from  this  having  a  shred  of  truth  in  it,  they  all  are 
friends  of  the  workingman  and  have  every  reason 
to  be  his  friends.  They  are  asking  nothing  from 
him  for  which  they  do  not  give  an  equivalent. 

What  do  their  leaders  give?  And  what  do  all 
>uch  men  do?  Is  there  ever  trouble  and  con- 
tention which  they  do  not  promote  and  prolong 
is  far  as  possible?  Their  dupes  are  left  to  go  the 
limit  and  pay  the  bills.  Some  day  the  workingman 
will  discover  his  real  and  unselfish  friends. 

No  man  is  a  friend  of  the  laborers  who  attempts 
to  make  of  them  a  class,  who  speaks  of  them  as 
:he  laboring  class.  In  this  country  men  are  not 
livided  into  classes.  We  have  no  lower  and 
ipper  classes  except  morally,  and  that  is  within  every 
lan's  determination.  Men  who  come  here  from 
mntries  where  there  are  caste  classes  and  appeal  to 
>ur  working  citizens  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  the 
>ppressor  and  resist  a  tyrannical  government  show 
LOW  dense  is  their  ignorance  of  our  Constitution, 

321 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

laws,  and  customs.  While  our  churches  open  their 
doors  to  the  English  Bible  and  our  little  red  school- 
houses  stand  on  the  hilltops  of  our  country  roads, 
and  at  twenty-one  years  of  age  our  young  men  and 
women  have  the  ballot,  you  cannot  make  classes  of 
the  American  people.  Caste  classes  are  not  broken 
through  and  equalized.  The  American  is  held  to 
none.  The  long-persecuted  Jew  knows  no  such  re- 
straint. In  minorities  of  a  republic  where  there  is  a 
ballot  he  reaches  positions  of  great  eminence  and  of 
great  wealth.  The  American  is  conscious  of  his 
citizenship.  If  changes  are  needed,  he  does  not 
need  to  change.  He  holds  in  his  hand  the  power  to 
make  the  change.  His  danger  is  that  he  will  over- 
assert  his  independence  and  resent  what  he  imagines 
is  patronage.  Pity  that  he  does  not  resent  the  im- 
plied weakness  in  the  suggestion  of  oppression  and 
slavery  with  which  he  is  held  up  for  sympathy  in  all 
contested  questions^of  wage  and  labor  privileges. 

It  would  help  our  universal  manhood  if  all  in- 
timations of  class  were  instantly  resented  as  offen- 
sively slanderous.  Those  who  come  among  us  from 
alien  countries  should  be  shown  at  once  that  such 
things  are  unknown  to  us.  Men  choose  their  sta- 
tions in  life  here.  If  there  is  any  trouble,  it  is  that 
sometimes  they  are  too  free  to  show  their  independ- 
ence. Men  are  most  independent  who  say  the  least 
about  it.  Altruism  is  the  chief  element  in  genuine 
independence.  If  a  man  will  have  friends,  he  must 
be  friendly,  and  not  simply  where  there  is  personal 

322 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

gain  by  exchange,  but  upon  the  broader  principles  of 
humanity. 

One  of  the  secrets  of  American  independence  is  in 
the  fact  that  we  are  a  working  people.  A  man  is  a 
man  for  all  of  that.  The  leisurely  people  are  the 
aged.  The  rich  are  the  most  active  among  us.  It 
is,  therefore,  difficult  to  lead  the  laborer  "to  the 
manner  born"  into  class  hate.  "It  is  only  a  gener- 
ation from  shirt  sleeves  to  shirt  sleeves."  The 
man  who  condemns  strikes  and  boycotts  is  willing 
to  show  his  hands.  His  experiences  lead  from  his 
father's  New  England  farm  to  the  farthest  Western 
ranch.  He  knows  stagedriving  and  steamboating. 
He  has  gone  through  all  the  experiences  of  the  work- 
ingman.  This  is  true  of  the  capitalists:  few  of 
them  who  have  not  been  on  the  farms  and  in  the 
mills  and  factories.  It  sounds  strange  to  them  when 
they  hear  the  radicals  picturing  the  plutocrat's  in- 
difference to  the  downtrodden  workers.  Some  of 
us  who  are  branded  as  aristocrats  recall  with  pecu- 
liar pleasure  our  boyhood  homes  where  luxuries 
created  a  sensation,  but  where  frugal  and  temperate 
habits  were  a  constant  joy  and  are  a  sacred  memory. 
Thought  turns  often  to  the  old  house  beneath  the 
elms,  and  the  eyes  moisten  as  memory  reproduces 
the  familiar  faces  and  scenes  of  those  far-off  days 
when  all  pennies  were  counted  and  such  a  thing  as 
envy  was  unknown.  Those  people  made  a  great 
country.  The  richest  products  of  it  were  the  mighty 
men  born  in  the  homes  of  the  heroic  and  noble  poor. 

323 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

One  year  compared  with  another  and  what  was  short 
in  one  was  made  up  in  the  next.  Neighbors  were 
friends  with  a  common  bond.  What  concerned 
one  was  the  estate  of  all.  There  is  something 
greater  than  wage.  All  men  must  have  wages  to 
be  sure,  whatever  the  calling,  but  the  man  who  has 
only  a  wage  is  the  poor  man  of  the  community. 
Friendship  is  the  greatest  asset.  It  is  always  cur- 
rent. It  is  fatal  to  a  community  where  men  are 
taught  to  get  along  without  it.  Money  cannot  re- 
place it. 

In  the  early  days  our  country  was  rich  in  a  com- 
mon bond.  We  were  of  one  kind.  We  had  what 
we  had  made  in  government  and  home  and  business 
and  begrudged  no  man  his  opportunity.  There  was 
a  sharp  sentiment  against  men  who  did  not  make 
the  most  of  themselves.  There  is  nothing  greater 
than  the  earnest  development  of  oneself  with  what 
one  has.  But  that  is  vastly  different  from  the  pas- 
sion for  gain.  To  develop  oneself  is  greater  than  to 
increase  one's  bank  account.  In  our  strange  time 
there  does  not  seem  to  be  much  difference  in  the 
money  passion  between  the  workingman  and  the 
capitalist,  but  the  effect  upon  the  country  favors  the 
capitalist.  His  accumulations  and  profits  result  in 
more  products.  They  are  turned  over  in  increased 
business,  and  more  factories  go  up  and  more  men 
are  employed  and  the  price  of  goods  is  decreased 
because  there  are  more  of  them.  But  when  the 
workingman  carries  his  demand  beyond  a  point  justi- 

324 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 


fied  by  the  demand  for  products,  he  increases  the 
•cost  of  the  article,  and  that  means  the  high  cost  of 
living.     And  this  is  singularly  so  when  to  the  higher 
cost  of  production  is  the  lessened  production  by  dis- 
contented and  indifferent  and  inefficient  labor.  There 
is  a  demand  put  upon  manufacture  which  reacts  upon 
the  man  when  he  forces  higher  wage.     It  is  here 
that   the   laborer   is   his   own   worst   enemy.     The 
public  teacher  who  shows  him  the  folly  of  constant 
insistence  upon  higher  wage  when  it  can  only  be 
secured  by  the  strike  is  his  best  friend.     It  may  be 
said  that  a  given  business  pays  an  enormous  profit 
out  of  proportion  to  the  wages  paid,  but  there  are 
great  losses  also,  and  some  of  them  made  by  the 
success  of  the  business  which  furnished  employment 
to  the  workingman,  and  these  losses  are  not  shared 
y   the   wage-earners.      I    cannot   see    that   the    in- 
dustrial fault  is  all  with  the  capitalist.     Both  the 
employer  and  the  employee  seem  to  be  equally  intent 
upon  the  mighty  dollar.     The  plea   is  made  that 
ith  the  employee  it  means  food  and  clothes.     But 
at  is  not  the  gauge  set.     It  passes  far  beyond  that, 
nd  the  day  laborer  is  favored  both  by  large  wage 
nd  comparatively  small  expense.     All  are  glad  to 
ee  high  wages  paid  if  the  business  in  one  year  with 
nother  can  pay  it,  but  the  protection  of  the  country, 
he  prosperity  of  business,  the  sources  of  income  to 
11  must  be  carefully  studied.      It  is  not  a  grab  game, 
ound  philosophy  is  not  the  devil  for  the  hindmost, 
ut  for  every  man  a  fair  chance. 

325 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

Since  I  began  this  chapter  I  see  in  the  public  press 
that  the  State  Federation  of  New  York  has  declared 
for  some  decided  changes  in  the  unions,  namely,  "the 
elimination  of  industrial  and  social  disturbances 
from  labor  unions  of  the  State,  the  deposing  of 
union  leaders  whose  policies  are  radical,  and  the 
Americanizing  of  the  entire  federation  by  forcing 
those  within  its  membership  to  become  citizens  of 
the  United  States  and  by  swearing  the  entire  body 
to  allegiance  to  the  government." 

This  is  exceedingly  gratifying.  It  is  a  wholesome 
symptom  in  a  disease  that  has  had  a  long  run. 
Whether  it  means  a  cure  remains  to  be  seen.  It  is 
a  confession  in  a  diagnosis  of  all  the  essential  things 
which  I  have  charged.  The  union  has  been  the 
worst  enemy  of  the  laboring  man.  It  has  been  and 
is  conspicuous  for  its  industrial  disturbers.  Its 
leaders,  including  Mr.  Gompers  and  others  promi- 
nent in  union  councils,  have  been  often  reported  as 
radicals,  going  to  the  extreme  of  defying  law  and 
declaring  that  they  would  not  obey  certain  proposed 
laws  if  enacted  by  Congress.  It  is  time  that  they 
were  sworn  to  allegiance  to  the  government.  The 
swearing  should  be  begun  with  the  leaders. 

But  how  much  does  the  "elimination  of  industrial 
and  social  disturbers  from  labor  unions"  mean? 
Are  we  to  understand  that  union  men  are  no  longer 
to  be  permitted  to  interfere  with  institutions  and 
forms  of  business  which  refuse  to  unionize?  that  the 
walking  delegate  will  not  be  sent  around  to  spy  upon 

326 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

the  men  who  are  on  the  job  and  drive  them  off 
because  nonunion  men  are  working  on  that  job? 
That  has  been  one  of  the  worst  kinds  of  "industrial 
disturbance."  It  will  be  a  great  day  for  the  union 
when  it  fraternizes  with  all  workingmen  and  justi- 
fies itself  by  peaceful  methods  and  by  a  superior 
quality  of  workmanship.  And  will  the  "elimination 
of  social  disturbers"  go  to  the  limit  of  common 
courtesy  with  nonunion  men,  so  that,  for  instance, 
we  shall  hear  no  more  loathsome  and  degrading 
epithets  from  man  to  man  and  woman  to  woman  and 
child  to  child?  The  man  who  accomplishes  all  of 
this  will  be  the  reformer  of  the  unions,  whose  name 
will  be  a  blaze  of  glory  a  century  after  the  disturbing 
meteor  lias  fallen  below  his  narrow  horizon  in  ashes. 
The  world  never  needed  more  than  now  all  its 
workers,  and  any  plan  or  organization  which  re- 
fuses to  permit  them  to  answer  to  this  demand  puts 
itself  across  the  track  of  human  progress  like  a 
bowlder  which  has  fallen  out  of  its  uncertain  place 
in  the  gravel  and  sands  of  the  hillside.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  compute  the  damage  to  civilization, 
and  especially  to  America  as  a  people,  by  a  scheme 
which  has  put  an  arbitrary  limit  upon  labor,  scaling 
it  down  not  to  the  demands  of  progress  and  neces- 
sity, but  to  the  narrow  and  selfish  notions  of  an 
arbitrary  competition.  The  plan  of  our  founda- 
tions, upon  which  we  were  building  our  land  and 
country,  called  for  all  men  and  women  who  could 
work.  It  was  a  plan  to  build  a  new  free  country 

327 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  not  to  originate  a  class  of  industrial  dictators 
and  tyrants.  It  opened  the  doors  to  every  man  to 
learn  the  trade  he  chose  to  follow.  It  was  a  plan 
to  set  everybody  to  work,  for  everybody  was  needed, 
and  not  to  select  the  few  and  favored  to  control 
industries.  There  never  has  been  a  time  when  all 
have  not  been  needed.  The  appeal  now  for  work- 
ers all  over  the  country  is  not  to  be  traced  to  the 
dead  and  maimed  of  the  war.  That  would  not  have 
made  a  perceptible  impression  in  a  land  of  such  a 
rapidly  increasing  population.  The  trouble  with 
us  is  that  the  labor  unions  have  been  opposed  to 
increase  of  workers.  The  young  men  have  been 
shut  out  of  apprenticeships,  as  I  have  shown,  and  the 
workingman,  the  plain  mechanic,  has  felt  no  stimulus 
and  ambition  to  make  the  most  of  himself.  How 
could  anything  worse  have  been  done  to  discourage 
labor  and  disqualify  the  mechanic,  once  the  pride  of 
the  country?  It  is  now  a  constant  lesson  that  the 
chief  end  of  labor  was  higher  wages.  Everything 
has  yielded  to  this  until  it  holds  up  the  capitalist  as  a 
grinding  enemy  and  also  attacks  the  nonunion  man 
who  sees  his  employer's  side  of  the  controversy  as 
an  enemy.  In  a  period  of  the  greatest  demand  and 
opportunity  the  workingman  is  made  the  proponent 
of  our  greatest  difficulties  and  the  enemy  of  our 
prosperity.  If  we  can  get  rid  of  this  opposition,  we 
can  go  on  again.  It  is  strange,  an  amazing  fact, 
that  the  enemy  of  labor  is  the  laborer.  In  his  short- 
sightedness he  has  gone  on  blindly  obstructing 

328 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

progress.  He  has  adopted  crude  theories  by  men 
conspicuously  incompetent  to  lead,  until  the  work- 
able theory  for  which  he  has  stood  for  years  has 
produced  its  results  in  a  burdensome  cost  account 
which  has  moved  up  with  the  equal  pace  of  his 
wages  and  has  been  as  much  more  disastrous  as  his 
tyrannical  control  has  limited  the  number  of  hours 
with  pay  and  a  half  and  double  pay.  At  last  a  small 
light  dawns  on  the  eastern  horizon,  which  we  hope  is 
the  sunrise  coming.  We  hope  that  it  is  not  an 
arctic  sunrise  which  will  disappear  on  a  cold  and 
cheerless  horizon  as  soon  as  it  appears.  Our  hope 
is  enlarged  and  strengthened  because  we  believe  that 
it  is  the  promise  of  an  awakening  people.  The 
country  is  getting  its  eyes  open.  The  question  is 
going  around  as  to  whether  our  broad  land  is  to  be 
intimidated  by  an  oligarchy  of  aliens  in  control  of 
our  houses  of  Congress  with  the  Gompers  and  Fost- 
ers and  Lewises  writing  the  party  platforms  of  our 
Presidential  candidates.  When  the  American  people 
wake  up  they  will  make  short  work  of  a  common 
foe.  They  will  not  leave  enough  of  it  to  offer  in 
barter  between  political  parties.  I  predict  that  the 
discoveries  which  have  been  brought  to  the  surface 
in  the  perilous  coal  strike  closing  our  industries  and 
threatening  thousands  of  lives  will  make  it  impos- 
sible for  any  political  party  to  take  up  the  outcast 
leaders  condemned  by  the  whole  people  as  enemies 
of  humanity.  We  condemn  ourselves,  we  challenge 
our  capacity  for  self-government  when  we  permit  rats 

329 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

to  gnaw  themselves  into  our  Constitution  and  make 
their  nests  there  and  claim  that  they  are  a  legitimate 
and  lawful  part  of  our  national  household.  The 
present  conditions  in  the  high  cost  of  living,  in  the 
paralysis  of  building  by  cost  of  material  and  labor, 
are  not  due  to  any  usual  law  of  supply  and  demand 
but  to  propaganda  which  has  been  going  on  for  a 
generation  by  men  who  have  no  interest  in  the 
country,  nor  in  the  laborers,  but  who  are  using  the 
unions  and  dictating  the  statutes  for  their  own 
selfish  ends.  It  is  a  fruitful  field.  The  appeal  is 
in  the  realm  of  exaggeration.  The  contrasts  are 
drawn  between  rich  and  poor,  between  capital  and 
labor.  It  is  not  the  workingman  who  is  the  propa- 
gandist, it  is  the  socialist  leader  who  offers  his 
services  to  the  downtrodden  laborer  and  takes  his 
fat  salary  from  the  union  fees.  It  is  easier  to  be  a 
walking  delegate,  to  be  a  federation  leader  or  chief, 
than  to  work  in  a  union  at  the  bench  or  in  a  mill  or 
factory.  The  workingman  has  been  hoodwinked 
and  fooled  constantly  and  easily  by  men  who  pre- 
tend to  be  his  friends,  and  who  are  his  worst 
enemies.  The  more  unions  the  more  salaries,  the 
more  wages  the  bigger  fees  for  the  leaders.  There 
never  have  been  richer  pickings  for  the  ignorant  and 
ranting  demagogues.  It  is  a  marvelous  scheme  for 
those  who  work  it.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  in- 
telligent mechanics  of  the  United  States  fall  such 
easy  dupes  to  it.  It  is  the  pot  of  gold  at  the  end 
of  the  rainbow  which  the  child  chases.  It  is  the 

330 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

search  for  fabled  buried  treasures.  There  has  been 
no  employment,  nor  wage,  nor  condition  which 
would  not  have  come  to  merit  without  suspicion  and 
contention. 

Any  platform  built  outside  the  Constitution  is 
built  on  sands.  Any  philosophy  of  economics  which 
does  not  include  all  men  on  equal  terms  will  inevit- 
ably clash  with  our  institutions  of  personal  freedom 
and  in  time  must  go  down  in  hopeless  wreck.  It  is 
folly  to  plan  a  revision  of  our  fundamental  laws 
to  meet  something  which  conflicts  with  common  fair- 
ness among  men,  which  opposes  the  square  deal 
preached  by  Roosevelt.  Our  founders  did  not  set 
up  a  government  for  a  class  and  much  less  for  a 
minority  class.  Every  man  who  qualifies  as  a  citizen 
and  pays  his  tax,  however  small,  has  an  indisputable 
claim  upon  all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  any  man 
under  the  government.  One  of  these  primal  rights 
is  his  privilege  to  earn  his  own  living  by  honest 
labor,  and  no  man  has  a  right  to  hinder  him.  To 
hinder  and  prevent  him  is  the  act  of  a  highwayman. 
But  the  laborer  is  more  than  caring  for  his  own  life 
— that  is  a  primary  object.  He  is  a  citizen  of  the 
republic.  He  belongs  to  the  public.  He  and  his 
employer  and  the  men  who  furnish  the  capital  and 
their  friends  are  the  public.  There  is  no  other 
public.  When,  therefore,  any  agitators  come  in 
to  take  away  this  man's  privilege  and  make  difficult 
his  earnings,  they  injure  the  whole  public  and  should 
be  made  to  settle  with  it.  As  a  people  we  often  do 

331 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

not  appreciate  the  relation  of  individual  rights  to  the 
government  as  a  whole.  Neglect  lies  in  carelessness 
of  fundamentals.  We  knock  out  substantial  under- 
pinnings when  we  allow  any  exemptions  to  one  group 
which  interfere  with  another.  Listen  as  Ameri- 
cans to  recent  complaints  that  promises  have  been 
given  to  the  federation  of  labor  leaders  that  a 
certain  law  of  the  country  should  not  be  applied  to 
union  workers.  How  long  could  any  government 
stand  upon  such  an  application  of  law?  But  that 
has  been  the  puerile  assertion  of  arbitrary  right 
which  has  dominated  the  country  from  the  same 
source  all  these  years  of  abuse  and  violation  of  law. 
But  the  exemption  from  law  is  not  the  province  of 
any  executive  or  the  lawful  demand  of  any  leaders. 
The  laws  belong  to  the  whole  people,  and  not  to  a 
part  of  the  people.  There  is  not,  nor  can  there  be, 
any  such  thing  as  private  interpretation.  In  the 
instance  we  have  a  striking  illustration  of  the  peril 
of  permitting  any  body  of  men  to  set  up  laws  for 
themselves  and  practice  things  which  override  the 
rights  of  others  defined  by  our  laws  and  protected  by 
our  courts.  What  has  been  allowed  without  law 
comes  to  be  put  forth  as  law,  and  if  at  any  point  it  is 
disputed,  a  wail  of  betrayal  is  sent  up.  We  cannot 
insist  too  earnestly  upon  and  repeat  too  often  the 
peril  through  which  we  have  been  coming.  Con- 
gress has  been  making  our  laws  and  the  unions  have 
made  others,  and  with  astounding  effrontery  they 
have  secured  amendments  which  have  given  to  them 

332 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

immunity  from  unblushing  violation  of  the  plainest 
rights  of  men.  It  is  not  strange  that  we  have  a  vig- 
orous assertion  of  Bolshevism  among  us.  We  have 
looked  on  with  passive  curiosity  while  it  has  gath- 
ered force  and  now  dares  to  challenge  the  veracity 
of  the  President  and  to  question  the  justice  of  our 
courts. 

How  far  can  it  all  go  unhindered  and  unoppressed 
without  a  revolution?  It  dares  to-day  to  threaten 
every  hearth  in  the  land.  It  threatens  to  stop  every 
wheel  of  railroads  over  which  come  our  food  and 
our  fuel.  Can  any  loyal  Americans  afford  to  be 
associated  with  any  such  propaganda? 

I  wish  to  affirm  what  I  have  already  said:  The 
workingman  should  have  an  adequate  wage  to  meet 
the  demands  of  an  industrious,  temperate,  and 
:rugal  life;  that  he  may  have  his  home,  whether  a 
cottage  which  he  owns  or  rents  in  a  wholesome 
and  clean  part  of  the  town;  that  he  may  be 
l  clothed,  so  that  his  wife  and  children  may  be 
:omf ortable  in  their  persons  and  their  feelings ;  that 
he  may  be  well  fed  and  have  his  share  of  the 
amenities  of  life  which  belong  to  a  prudent  family; 
that  he  may  meet  the  demands  upon  a  citizen  and 
have  his  place  in  his  church  and  in  the  common 
charities.  I  would  have  him  receive  enough  for  a 
margin  for  the  savings  bank.  And  I  would  also 
have  this  workingman  appreciate  the  fact  that  his 
wage  must  come  from  the  profits  of  the  business 
which  employs  him  and  that  it  cannot  come  from  any 

333 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

other  source.  The  world  is  not  to  divide  with  him ; 
he  must  earn  what  he  is  to  possess.  And  even  in 
schools  and  churches  and  hospitals  he  must  bear  his 
part.  I  would  have  him  understand  that  he  is  not 
to  be  legislated  for  as  a  class  any  more  than  the 
traders  with  their  shops  and  stores  or  the  clerks  or 
commercial  travelers  or  the  teachers  in  the  public 
schools  or  the  nurses  in  the  hospitals  or  the  preach- 
ers, priests,  and  rabbis.  There  is  no  reason  why 
the  workingman  should  form  a  political  party  more 
than  men  of  other  callings.  He  is  a  citizen  of  the 
whole  country,  and  what  he  is  and  does  must  be  for 
the  country.  If  born  into  this  country,  this  should 
be  one  of  the  first  lessons  taught  him  in  the  kinder- 
garten, and  he  should  never  be  permitted  to  lose  it. 
If  he  comes  here,  he  should  meet  that  obligation  to 
the  land  when  he  comes  from  the  gangway,  and  the 
minute  he  shows  that  he  ignores  it  and  is  here  only 
for  what  he  can  scrape  up  and  has  no  other  use  for 
our  country  but  to  destroy  it,  he  should  be  sent  back 
whence  he  came.  Our  country  is  first,  and  those  who 
prefer  any  other  country  or  come  here  to  reform  our 
country  we  do  not  want,  and  we  should  not  permit 
to  stay  here.  They  are  a  thousand  times  more  to  be 
feared  than  the  coolie  Chinaman  or  Japanese. 

The  workingman  owes  it  to  himself  to  appreciate 
what  he  has.  He  is,  all  things  considered,  the  best 
paid  man  in  the  country  to-day.  His  average  pay 
is  over  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  some  of  the 
labor  callings  pay  twice  and  three  times  that  amount. 

334 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 

His  average  pay  is  more  than  the  average  of  the 
pay  of  the  preachers  of  all  denominations  of  our 
country  and  more  than  that  of  the  teachers.  Some 
of  the  workingmen  of  the  United  States  receive  far 
more  than  the  salaries  of  college  professors.  The 
workingman's  pay  has  gone  up  as  far  as  it  can  go 
without  economic  injury  to  him  and  to  the  country. 
In  many  cases  it  is  far  too  high  and  is  chargeable 
with  the  high  cost  of  living.  It  has  been  a  fatal 
blunder  for  him  to  be  used  by  his  leaders  to  force 
wages  up  because  he  could  beyond  where  the  country 
can  pay  them. 

I  am  in  hearty  sympathy  with  the  workingman. 
I  was  once  a  day  laborer.  I  paid  for  my^own  educa- 
tion, and  no  man  gave  me  a  cent  except  the  founders 
of  the  schools  which  I  found  waiting  for  me,  and 
which  every  laborer  finds  waiting  for  his  sons  and 
daughters.  For  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  the 
majority  of  members  in  my  church  were  working 
people,  and  I  greatly  delighted  in  them  and  never 
found  it  necessary  to  appeal  to  any  class  spirit  among 
them.  They  were  intelligent,  clean,  wholesome, 
noble  people.  Some  of  them,  starting  in  poverty 
and  humble  circumstances,  became  rich.  I  found 
no  jealousy  and  envy  among  them  because  of  their 
differing  estates  in  life.  I  prefer  that  kind  of  a 
church  to  one  wholly  rich  or  wholly  poor.  I  would 
prefer  the  second  to  the  first.  I  would  be  more  at 
home  in  it.  For  more  than  another  quarter  of  a 
century  I  have  been  at  the  head  of  a  poor  man's 

335 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

university.  I  do  not  want  it  to  be  any  different 
except  that  I  may  have  more  to  help  the  poor  man's 
sons  and  daughters.  I  have  begged  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  to  help  through  college  young 
men  and  young  women  who  were  helping  themselves 
as  best  they  could,  but  who  would  have  failed  with- 
out further  help.  I  have  received  this  help  from 
all  classes,  among  them  millionaires,  not  one  of 
whom  did  not  begin  life  a  poor  boy  or  a  poor  girl. 
Mrs.  Russell  Sage,  one  of  our  most  liberal  patrons, 
sat  at  an  open  window  to  hear  Jenny  Lind  sing  be- 
cause she  had  not  the  money  to  pay  the  admission  to 
the  concert.  Fortunately,  she  lived  next  door  to 
the  church  where  the  concert  was  given.  Will  you 
workingmen  ever  again  permit  your  noblest  bene- 
factors to  be  hunted  through  the  world  as  plutocrats 
and  the  predatory  rich? 

The  capitalist  has  not  always  been  the  working- 
man's  friend.  He  sometimes  has  treated  him  like 
a  lathe  or  drill  press — a  machine.  But  the  excep- 
tion should  not  be  charged  as  a  rule.  Some  men 
of  money  have  coined  their  dividends  out  of  blood 
and  the  sweat  of  the  brow.  They  have  been  with- 
out mercy.  But  there  is  little  of  that  left  now,  and 
the  agitator  who  teaches  laborers  to  look  upon  all 
employers  as  heartless  and  grinding  is  not  the  work- 
ingman's  friend.  Occasionally  there  is  a  man  of 
great  wealth,  through  fortunate  circumstances  more 
than  ability,  who  attempts  to  befriend  the  laboring 
man  in  an  unwise  and  harmful  way.  The  highest 

336 


in 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FRIENDS  AND  FOES 


interests  of  the  workingman  are  in  an  established 
and  widely  recognized  law  of  profit'and  wage.  It  is 
best  for  him  that  he  is  included  in  a  general  condi- 
tion rather  than  in  spasmodic  fluctuations,  even  if 
they  allow  him  in  a  given  industry  in  a  year,  greater 
pay.  The  multi-millionaire  who  scatters  eight  or 
ten  millions  of  wages  among  the  thousands  of  his 
workingmen  is  not  a  wise  friend  to  laborers.  He 
does  positive  harm  by  disturbing  the  whole  fabric  of 
labor.  I  do  not  question  his  motives.  His  un- 
wisdom is  plain  enough  for  anyone  to  see.  It  is 
fine  to  set  a  pattern  of  good  wage,  but  bonuses  are 
unstable  and  disturbing.  If  the  profits  are  ex- 
travagant after  the  best  material  and  workmanship 
has  been  put  into  the  product  and  high  wages  are 
paid,  the  price  could  be  lowered.  It  belongs  to  the 
public,  and  the  competition  would  do  no  harm  in  a 
period  of  extravagant  prices. 

The  prosperity  of  all  is  the  highest  prosperity  of 
my  neighbor  the  workingman.  Building  prospers, 
the  factories  prosper,  the  stores  prosper,  the  farms 
prosper;  these  are  the  best  patrons  of  labor.  The 
workingman's  prosperity  cannot  be  forced  ahead  of 
the  general  conditions  of  prosperity  in  his  com- 
munity. He  may  force  a  temporary  gain  or  receive 
an  unwise  bonus,  but  he  depends  upon  everybody's 
success.  He  cannot  be  set  aside  as  a  class,  and  all 
the  world  set  its  gauge  by  him  and  for  him.  He 
must  come  on  with  all  men  and  help  all  men. 


337 


CHAPTER  XVII 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

IT  is  an  old  maxim  in  which  are  sound  principles 
of  human  life  that  "No  man  lives  to  himself."  One 
of  the  troubles  with  our  country  is  that  men  are 
trying  to  reverse  that  ancient  teaching,  which,  if  old, 
is  not  out  of  date,  but  on  the  contrary  has  been 
established  by  its  age.  The  world  never  has  moved 
forward  a  rod  where  the  principle  has  been  for- 
gotten. Our  hope  of  manhood  and  our  stronghold 
upon  manhood  has  been  in  the  ample  provisions  in 
our  laws  and  institutions  for  all  men.  Men  who 
organize  themselves  into  a  political  party  to  over- 
throw our  institutions  and  set  up  a  new  code  of  laws 
among  us  are  not  of  us.  They  no  more  resemble  us 
than  do  the  Simians  of  tropic  jungles  because  they 
stand  on  two  legs  and  are  gregarious. 

The  other  day  these  Simian  descendants  met  in 
Chicago  and  organized  themselves  into  a  third 
political  party  which  they  called  "The  Labor 
Party."  It  is  strange  that  they  called  themselves 
the  labor  party.  They  did  not  affiliate  themselves 
with  the  lawyers,  nor  the  teachers  in  the  colleges,  nor 
with  the  merchants  and  manufacturers.  They 
chose  labor.  Was  it  because  there  is  anything  in 

338 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

the  conditions  of  labor  in  this  country  which  calls 
for  agitation  and  defense  by  aliens  who  have 
insinuated  their  perverting  notions  into  its  organi- 
zations ?  This  attempt  to  establish  a  political  propa- 
ganda does  not  represent  American  labor.  The 
great  element  of  labor  in  this  country  is  loyal 
and  contented.  Strikes  in  nearly  all  cases  are  pro- 
jected by  foreigners  or  their  descendants,  who  never 
have  learned  our  laws  and  whose  ignorance  is  the 
secret  of  their  diabolical  mischief.  Our  working- 
men  are  responsible  for  permitting  such  characters 
to  have  any  place  among  them  and  to  hang  up  their 
red  flags  above  the  roofs  of  labor  unions  and  make 
them  their  headquarters.  These  founders  of  the 
first  openly  declared  Bolshevic  political  party  in  our 
country,  men  defeated  in  bomb-throwing  and  other 
kinds  of  assassination  and  sabotage,  declare  as  their 
political  principles,  in  the  name  of  labor,  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  United  States  Senate ;  the  overthrow  of 
our  federal  courts  by  electing  with  popular  vote,  for 
terms  of  four  years,  the  judges  who  are  now  safe- 
guarded in  honest,  judicial  opinions  by  life  terms; 
the  condemnation  of  government  injunctions;  the 
release  of  all  political  and  industrial  prisoners;  the 
internationalizing  of  all  labor;  demand  of  free 
speech,  free  press,  and  free  assembly;  old-age  unem- 
ployment and  sick  pensions;  incomes  of  individuals 
to  be  limited  by  law;  the  ownership  by  government 
of  banks  and  the  control  by  the  government  of  all 
banking  operations;  government  ownership  and 

339 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

operation  of  railroads;  and  the  application  of  the 
home  rule  principle  (of  Bolshevism)  in  State,  county 
and  city  government. 

Here  we  have,  out  in  the  open,  what  Ole  Hansen 
fought  in  Seattle  and  Calvin  Coolidge  fought  in 
Boston.  It  will  surprise  thousands  of  our  citizens 
who  have  thought  it  the  harmless  ranting  of  the 
soap-boxers.  There  is  coupled  with  it  the  dignity 
and  influence  of  labor  citizenship,  although  tens  of 
thousands  of  the  champions  of  these  alien  doctrines 
could  not  cast  a  ballot.  There  are  also  coupled  with 
these  monstrous  doctrines,  appeals  calculated  to 
catch  the  popular  eye  of  those  who  can  read,  certain 
sympathetic  promises:  approval  of  woman's  suf- 
frage, equal  pay  of  men  and  women,  criminal  prose- 
cution of  profiteers  and  exploiters  of  labor,  con- 
demnation of  universal  military  training,  govern- 
ment work  to  be  done  by  day  labor  and  not  by 
contract. 

I  say  it  will  surprise  thousands  of  our  citizens  to 
know  that  anything  so  destructive  to  the  entire  struc- 
ture of  our  constitutional  government  and  a  dupli- 
cate of  the  Bolshevic,  soviet,  and  I.  W.  W.  teachings 
has  taken  root  deep  enough  to  bear  this  up  as  fruit 
in  our  political  economy.  But  what  surprises  me  is 
that  such  teachings  do  not  surprise  our  workingmen 
as  they  go  out  under  their  new  flag.  I  shall  be 
surprised,  perhaps  I  should  say,  if  there  is  not  an 
instant  protest  in  all  the  labor  unions  and  by  the 
independent  workers  of  the  whole  country  against 

340 


. 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

these  formal  promulgations  in  Chicago  by  declared 
enemies  of  our  country.  The  responsibility  is  upon 
the  labor  union  as  an  organization  which  can  speak 
in  the  community  with  one  voice  and  which  owes  it  to 
itself  to  exterminate  this  pernicious  thing.  The 
virus  can  no  longer  be  denied,  nor  concealed.  Labor 
unions  must  accept  and  champion  it  or  refute  it. 
Union  men  must  either  stand  for  these  doctrines  or 
come  out  from  the  unions  in  which  they  have  taken 
shelter  and  which  practically  indorse  them. 

Look  at  them !  They  propose  the  destruction  of 
our  Constitution,  not  in  a  vague,  undefined  way,  but 
by  striking  down  and  destroying  a  coordinate  form 
of  our  government.  Has  the  attack  by  the  Presi- 
dent upon  the  Senate  emboldened  the  Bolshevists  to 
insert  this  plank  in  their  platform?  They  demand 
the  destruction  of  our  courts.  Are  our  workingmen 
ready  to  substitute  the  reign  of  terror  for  the  reign 
of  law?  They  ask  that  banks  and  financial  opera- 
tions shall  be  put  into  their  hands.  That  involves 
all  business,  all  commerce,  and  all  manufacture.  Do 
they  want  such  men  to  hold  the  mortgages  on  their 
cottages?  The  next  step  would  be  the  nationalizing 
of  women  and  families,  for  the  foreign  authors  of 
these  doctrines  have  declared  against  the  family 
as  the  foe  to  their  propaganda.  Are  the  working- 
men  of  America  prepared  for  these  things?  Will 
they  stand  for  such  politics?  Will  they  permit 
themselves  to  be  used  even  as  silent  partners  in  such 
infamy?  Will  they  stand  by  and  have  their  hon- 

341 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

orable  name  put  forth  for  these  monstrous  proposi- 
tions so  late  as  the  twentieth  century? 

The  men  who  have  projected  this  labor  party, 
with  these  anarchistic  planks,  are  not  Americans; 
their  birthright  is  not  in  the  twentieth  century. 
They  are  as  barbarous  as  the  hordes  of  Alaric  and 
the  mad  Kaiserites  whom  we  have  just  overthrown. 
They  have  no  right  to  the  name  of  labor.  They 
have  no  part  with  labor.  They  destroy  everything 
they  touch.  They  add  nothing  constructive  to  our 
country,  and  in  the  country  from  which  they  bring 
the  model  of  their  diabolicism  they  have  poured  a 
flood  of  pestilential  ruin  upon  the  unfortunate 
people,  deluging  them  with  every  imaginable  hurt 
and  misery  and  sorrow.  In  this  country  the  work- 
ingman  is  a  citizen.  He  is  already,  and  always  has 
been,  in  the  majority.  He  knows  that  the  alien 
counterfeit  which  circulates  appeals  to  him  against 
the  government  for  his  help  as  a  laborer,  in  an 
effort  to  overthrow  our  Senate  and  courts,  is  not 
for  labor,  but  for  anarchy  and  Bolshevism.  It  is  not 
for  a  greater  chance  to  labor  or  more  just  hours  or 
larger  wage.  It  is  to  steal  the  name  of  labor  with 
which  to  serve  Bolshevism.  It  is  to  use  labor  to  set 
up  a  rule  of  anarchism  and  steal  the  estates  of  men 
who  have  won  what  they  have  by  labor.  Labor  has 
never  been  so  grossly  outraged,  never  so  shamelessly 
defamed,  as  it  is  in  being  put  forth  by  these  wild 
agitators  as  champions  of  their  murderous  preten- 
sions to  a  reform  party.  Can  it  be  possible  that 

342 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

there  is  sufficiently  dense  ignorance  in  any  body  of 
men  in  our  country  to  encourage  th'ese  "murderers 
general"  to  attempt  an  organized  attack  upon  our 
constitutional  government  and  our  world-renowned 
finance  and  commerce?  And  who  are  the  persons 
into  whose  hands  they  are  to  place  it  all?  The 
Berkmans  and  Goldmans  are  their  champions. 
The  prisons  at  Atlanta  and  Leavenworth  are  to 
yield  the  Debs  and  Nearings,  while  Mooney  will  be 
brought  over  from  San  Quentin.  The  soap-box 
orators,  in  the  tramps'  unclean  rags,  will  take  charge 
of  the  banks  and  the  bomb-makers  can  be  spared  to 
run  the  factories.  There  will  be  no  great  men 
needed  for  the  Senate.  There  will  be  no  Senate. 
It  is  entertaining;  it  is  exhilarating  to  let  the  mind 
dwell  upon  the  wonderful  change  which  will  come 
over  this  great  land,  when  the  new  Congress,  the 
new  courts,  the  new  banks,  the  whole  new  order 
remove  the  present  order  and  substitute  their  men 
for  the  old  United  States  and  set  up  for  us  a  new 
and  improved  land  and  country!  Of  course  they 
have  qualified  somewhere  in  something!  They 
have  proved  themselves  as  statesmen  and  jurists  and 
financiers!  We  have  been  in  the  habit  of  insisting 
upon  this  test.  Ninety  per  cent  of  labor  has  de- 
manded it  before  it  could  go  to  the  polls  and  vote; 
that  is,  all  labor  has  except  the  new  labor  party! 
Possibly  the  new  champions  of  human  freedom  will 
point  us  to  Russia!  There  is  one  encouragement: 
there  need  be  no  fear  of  coal  strikes — the  smokeless 

343 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

factory  chimneys  prove  that.  There  would  be  no 
need  of  casket  companies — they  have  buried  more 
people  over  there  with  less  coffins  than  the  world 
has  ever  known.  The  folly  of  savings  banks  can  be 
set  aside — the  people  have  nothing  to  deposit;  their 
representatives  take  all  of  that.  There  will  be  no 
taxes — no  one  will  own  anything  and  the  state  or 
government  will  do  everything.  Lenine  is  appeal- 
ing to  his  imperiled  constituency  against  the  few, 
daring  to  own  small  farms,  as  capitalists  and  pluto- 
crats who  will  attempt  to  overthrow  his  nothing-f  or- 
anybody  plan,  with  which  even  some  proletariats 
begin  to  show  symptoms  of  discontent.  When  has 
there  been  anything  in  our  land  so  degrading  and 
humiliating  to  intelligent  men  and  women  as  this 
unblushing  announcement,  by  a  crowd  of  imbeciles, 
of  a  party  to  reform  our  government  throughout,  in 
the  name  of  American  labor? 

How  did  it  get  so  far  along,  and  how  did  it 
venture  to  take  on  the  name,  if  the  Judas  among  the 
twelve  of  labor  had  not  betrayed  the  country  by 
sympathetic  fellowship  and  bargaining  with  our 
enemies?  The  responsibility  is  with  the  labor 
unions  and  the  men  who  have  inspired  strikes  and 
defied  injunctions  and  assailed  the  Senate  until 
Atlanta  loomed  up  before  them.  The  men  who 
have  been  praised  for  their  loyalty  to  our  nation 
have  been  making  the  conditions  which  have  made 
possible  the  courage  of  anarchists  to  form  an  an- 
archist political  party  among  us,  that  they  may 

344 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

escape  the  penalty  of  seditious  speech  by  posing  as  a 
political  party.  The  truckling,  the  compromises, 
the  abuse  of  the  coordinate  Senate  of  the  great 
government  by  the  administration  so  desperately  un- 
fortunate for  us  at  a  time  like  this,  have  been 
sources  of  inspiration  to  every  malcontent  plotting 
to  overthrow  our  mighty  republic.  Sturdy  Ameri- 
canism at  Washington,  resisting  the  first  inception 
of  labor's  unreasonable  demands  and  enforcing  de- 
portation at  New  York  before  it  became  too 
notorious  to  hide  or  defend,  would  have  saved  the 
country  from  an  invasion  which  would  not  have  dis- 
banded the  police  of  Boston  nor  shot  our  brave  boys 
at  Centralia,  and  left  it  safe  for  traitorous  maraud- 
ers to  organize  publicly  in  Chicago.  We  are  back 
at  the  old  game  again  with  men  as  disreputable  as 
the  Boston  police,  flattering  them  for  loyalty  after 
they  have  held  up  the  whole  country  for  five  weeks 
in  winter,  closing  down  business  at  a  time  when  the 
whole  world  is  crying  out  for  production,  and  freez- 
ing the  homes  of  vast  areas,  with  no  mercy  for  the 
sick  and  aged.  While  it  is  true  that  we  all  had  a 
right  to  expect  our  authorities  to  make  short  work 
of  an  abuse  of  privilege  so  glaringly  disloyal  and 
ii.human,  I  cannot  resist  the  thought,  which  is  gen- 
eral, that  labor  in  its  organic  form  has  a  large  re- 
sponsibility for  conditions  so  antagonistic  to  the 
sacred  interests  of  our  country.  Labor  must  not  be 
used  by  designing  politicians  nor  by  Bolshevist 
pirates. 

345 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

Labor  in  every  form,  and  especially  in  the  unions, 
should  respect  itself  so  instantly  and  thoroughly  as 
to  make  it  impossible  for  any  alien  and  dangerous 
element  to  shelter  under  its  roof,  or  to  use  its  name. 
It  cannot  escape  being  judged  by  its  associates.  Its 
sympathies  will  bear  fruit.  They  are  the  buds,  and 
they  are  poison  buds  which  it  does  not  take  an  expert 
to  detect.  It  will  be  strange,  and  convictingly  so, 
if  all  over  this  mighty  land  labor  does  not  speak  its 
tremendous  protest  against  being  used  in  name  in 
any  attempt  to  overthrow  our  government  and  espe- 
cially in  an  effort  with  particulars  more  traitorous 
than  traitor  ever  uttered  in  our  history.  If  labor 
does  not  repudiate  this  use  of  its  name,  it  gives  its 
name  to  be  used  and  is  as  traitorous  as  the  gang  of 
our  foes  at  Chicago.  It  is  a  case  of  being  against 
them  or  with  them.  If  labor  would  claim  a  patent 
upon  its  name  for  anything,  it  should  be  for  loyalty. 
It  cannot  be  careless  of  its  country  and  live.  Our 
hope  in  our  labor,  the  overwhelming  majority  of  it, 
is  in  what  it  is  in  its  citizenship.  Property  cannot 
afford  to  be  disloyal  and  give  its  destiny  into  the 
hands  of  anarchists  who  can  be  held  to  no  responsi- 
bility for  it.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  our  laborers 
own  their  neat  homes  and  have  modest  savings  in 
the  banks.  They  own  small  farms  and  truck  plots 
and  milk  routes.  They  have  small  mills  and  shops, 
and  those  who  do  not  actually  possess  these  things 
have  them  in  their  ambitions  and  prudent  savings. 
The  workers  who  count  upon  them  to  overthrow  the 

346 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

republic  where  such  things  are  so  common,  reckon 
their  own  overthrow.  Ours  is  not  a  discontented 
labor.  There  is  only  a  small  per  cent  of  it  so,  and 
that  is  under  alien  influence.  Millions  of  our  work- 
ingmen  have  gone  under  the  saving  influence  of  the 
common  school  and  the  free  high  school.  Millions 
of  them  read  newspapers  which  teach  the  sound 
principles  upon  which  the  great  republic  was 
founded.  Millions  of  them  have  been  schooled 
to  correct  our  country's  mistakes  by  changing  men 
and  not  by  destroying  law.  When  they  make  a  mis- 
take by  carelessly  choosing  wrong  men,  they  wait 
their  time  and  choose  the  next  time  more  carefully, 
and  they  choose  always  to  build  up  and  not  to  tear 
down.  They  cannot  be  rallied  to  destroy.  They 
can  be  rallied  to  defend  our  institutions  and  our 
liberties.  In  forty-eight  hours  a  million  of  them 
would  be  on  their  way  to  recruiting  camps  to  march 
out  against  the  hairy,  unwashed  gang  which  has 
made  the  mistake  of  imagining  that  we  have  a  griev- 
ance over  here  which  we  cannot  redress  with  our 
own  intelligence  and  our  own  loyal  support  of  prin- 
ciples which  must  be  made  the  foundation  stones  of 
every  permanent  land.  Our  workingmen  cannot  be 
enlisted  in  the  cause  of  ignorance,  of  vice,  of  cruelty, 
of  murder,  of  tyranny,  of  riotous  destruction  of 
property,  under  a  flag  of  hatred  of  the  prosperous 
and  contented  borne  by  the  indolent,  the  licentious, 
and  the  traitorous  foes  of  all  order  and  all  govern- 
ment. Men  of  the  Bolshevistic  stripe,  who  think 

347 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

that  our  men  can  be  rallied  in  such  a  course,  have 
not  taken  their  measure.  They  have  overlooked 
the  little  red  building  on  the  hilltop.  They  have 
not  seen  the  farm  paper  or  the  church  paper  or  the 
illustrated  weekly  in  the  country  home.  They  have 
not  examined  the  book  tagged  with  the  public  library 
which  the  boy  is  reading  in  spare  moments.  They 
have  not  attended  the  town  meeting  where  com- 
munity affairs  are  discussed  and  noted  the  numbers 
of  young  men  eager  listeners,  nor  seen  the  crowds 
of  young  men  and  boys  who  made  up  a  large  per  cent 
of  political  gatherings  where  great  national  ques- 
tions are  the  common  property  of  all  the  people. 
Those  who  propose  to  destroy  our  Senate  at  Wash- 
ington will  have  to  show  the  most  ignorant  of  us 
why.  They  will  find  it  as  deep-rooted  as  our 
churches  and  our  homes.  Politically  men  will  differ 
with  it,  but  they  will  respect  it  and  honor  it  as  their 
government,  and  to  be  without  it  has  never  entered 
the  most  intense  partisan  thought.  They  will  change 
the  men  in  it,  but  it  stands  forever.  Under  stress 
of  political  feeling,  they  may  recall  a  judge,  but 
they  will  never  reverse  a  judicial  decision  by  popular 
vote.  To  recall  men  is  one  thing,  to  recall  law  is 
quite  another. 

I  do  not  direct  my  neighbor's  attention  to  the 
anarchists  who  dare  to  declare  themselves  as  an 
American  political  party  in  the  name  of  labor  be- 
cause I  have  any  fear  that  they  will  ever  rally  the 
labor  of  this  country  under  their  red  flag  of  riot. 

348 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

I  am  moved  by  an  instinctive  loyalty  which  protests 
anything  so  revolting  as  an  avowed  purpose  to  over- 
throw my  government,  however  idiotic  that  purpose 
may  be.  I  speak  that  my  neighbor  the  working- 
man  may  not  carelessly  allow  himself  to  stand  for 
anything  which  so  outrageously  slanders  him  and 
misuses  the  honorable  name  of  labor.  There  are 
things  in  this  country  which  we  do  not  fear,  but 
which  we  loathe,  and  if  they  are  not  perilous,  never- 
theless we  cannot  tolerate  them  with  self-respect. 
The  self-respect  of  our  laboring  men  is  a  priceless 
asset.  Without  it  we  would  not  be  safe  a  day 
against  the  Bolshevist  and  the  wild-eyed  socialist. 
When  the  silly  theorists  of  the  colleges  and  the 
newspaper  forum  are  wallowing  in  the  quagmires  of 
internationalism,  we  can  always  depend  upon  our 
solid  workingmen  of  the  farms  and  shops  to  re- 
member that  this  is  America  and  that  there  is  no 
land  between  the  seas  so  safe,  so  kind  in  its  oppor- 
tunities, so  solid  in  its  progressive  stability  as 
America. 

My  purpose  is  to  warn  my  neighbor,  whose  work 
I  once  helped  do,  of  the  injustice  he  does  himself 
and  the  discredit  he  brings  upon  his  country  when 
he  permits  himself  to  act  under  a  leadership  which 
antagonizes  the  Constitution  of  his  great  land  and 
which  proposes  any  violation  or  disregard  of  its 
laws.  American  workingmen  cannot  afford  to  per- 
mit their  names  to  be  used  in  a  declared  plan  to  over- 
turn the  foundations  of  our  government.  They 

349 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

may  say  to  me  that  their  leaders  have  pronounced 
against  the  political  party  which  declares  its  pur- 
poses to  destroy  our  Senate  and  courts,  but  such 
declaration  of  the  federation  of  labor  is  made  null 
and  void  by  the  hostile  utterances  of  its  leaders  in 
defiance  of  our  laws  and  by  continuing  our  steel  and 
coal  strikes.  Men  who  are  on  record  with  their 
statements  that  they  will  not  obey  laws  against 
strikes  and  their  contempt  for  injunctions,  differ  so 
little  from  the  anarchist  leaders  of  politics  as  to  have 
no  influence  against  them  or  to  represent  loyal  work- 
ingmen.  They  may  pronounce  against  Bolshevism, 
but  they  are  Bolshevists.  They  oppose  all  law 
which  opposes  their  practices.  They  oppose  the  in- 
junction when  it  enjoins  them.  They  say  that  they 
do  not  sympathize  with  agitators  and  radicals. 
What  are  they  themselves?  We  have  had  no 
worse  agitators  than  the  men  who  have  inspired  a 
generation  of  strikes  and  sabotage.  These  men  tell 
their  followers  that  the  land  is  governed  by  injunc- 
tion and  injunction  is  the  decision  of  one  man,  as 
though  there  were  no  court  to  vacate  it  if  unjust, 
and  as  though  a  lower  court's  decision  is  not  always 
by  one  man.  It  is  Bolshevism  which  demands  court 
decisions  by  popular  vote. 

It  is  too  late  for  federation  leaders  to  declaim 
against  the  introduction  of  the  Bolshevist  spirit  into 
the  federation  of  labor.  It  has  been  there  for  years. 
It  has  been  a  controlling  spirit  from  the  beginning. 
It  started  with  the  spirit  of  dictation  and  tyranny 

350 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

and  put  itself  across  the  plain  path  of  constitutional 
liberty  of  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  work- 
ingmen  of  this  country.  And  it  is  only  when  it  sees 
the  handwriting  of  the  people  on  the  wall,  against 
disloyal  utterances  condemning  the  courts,  that  it 
puts  forth  professions  of  loyalty  and  renounces  the 
work  of  its  own  hands  and  repudiates  the  foes  of  our 
land  whom  it  has  fostered  and  used  against  us. 

What  is  the  persistent  attack  upon  capital  but 
Bolshevism?  The  anarchist  party  says,  "Limit  the 
amount  a  man  shall  have."  The  federation  assails 
capital  blindly  and  condemns  capitalists  for  what 
they  have,  without  regard  to  consequences.  It  is 
worse,  for  it  is  destruction  without  limit  and  dis- 
organizes the  whole  structure  of  business  and  labor. 
The  anarchist  political  party  in  the  name  of  labor 
has  the  intelligence  and  courage  of  definiteness.  I 
cannot  understand  what  labor  is  going  to  do  when 
capital  is  restricted.  It  is  a  peculiar  limitation  of 
the  rights  of  man.  It  opens  a  large  question,  reach- 
ing even  into  the  divine  economy.  There  are 
certain  primary  questions.  If  we  are  to  limit  a 
man's  right  to  get  all  the  money  he  can  by  ability 
and  honesty  in  business,  why  not  limit  his  right  to 
learning  since  his  larger  learning  gives  him  ad- 
vantage over  his  associates?  He  would  learn  engi- 
neering and  applied  science  and  mechanics.  He 
would  have  larger  reasoning  faculties.  Why  not 
limit  the  size  of  his  home,  make  it  one  story  instead 
of  two  or  three,  and  restrict  the  cost,  becgju.se  the 

351 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

workingman  lives  in  a  one-story  cottage?  Why 
not  limit  the  number  of  his  children,  for  they  inherit 
his  fortune  when  he  dies  and  increase  the  number 
of  capitalists! 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  reductio  ad  absurdam 
with  the  enemies  of  capitalists.  They  start  with  an 
absurdity  too  great  for  anything  more  absurd  to  be 
reduced  from  it.  As  well  talk  about  labor  without 
skill  and  muscle  as  business  without  money  and 
money-making  employers.  For  workingmen  to  plot 
against  capital  is  as  senseless  as  it  would  be  to  cut 
their  feet  off  because  shoes  cost  too  much.  Capital 
is  a  part  and  parcel  of  labor.  It  is  the  laborers' 
capital  furnished  them  by  men  who  might  keep  it 
from  them  by  not  using  it  or  by  turning  it  in  other 
directions.  It  is  the  extreme  of  folly  to  talk  about 
capital  being  an  interest  by  itself  and  labor  being 
another  interest  by  itself,  and  that  they  can  be 
opposed  to  each  other.  Capital  has  nothing  and 
can  do  nothing  of  which  labor  is  not  an  identified 
and  an  essential  part.  And  labor  can  be  nothing 
which  does  not  concern  capital.  The  health  and 
contentment  and  skill  and  all  the  habits  of  working- 
men  are  a  part  of  capital.  These  things  are  an 
essential  investment  of  the  capitalist.  What  folly, 
suggesting  the  inmates  of  the  feeble-minded  institu- 
tions, when  men,  who  have  forced  themselves  into 
leadership,  preach  antagonism  between  these  iden- 
tical interests  which  depend  upon  each  other  for  the 
success  of  either. 

352 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

As  I  have  said,  capital  has  sometimes  been  unjust 
to  labor.  It  has  withheld  wages  when  it  should 
have  paid  more,  and  been  indifferent  to  conditions  of 
sanitation,  and  charged  in  its  stores  exorbitant  prices 
of  its  employees.  Its  bosses  have  often  been  brutal 
and  dismissed  men  unfairly.  But  labor  has  been 
unjust  to  capital.  It  has  done  its  work  inefficiently 
through  ignorance  and  shiftlessness,  spoiling  valu- 
able machines  and  material.  It  has  laid  off  as  it 
chose  and  grumbled  and  excited  discontent  without 
cause.  The  just  complaint  has  not  all  been  on  one 
side.  Let  us  have  the  account  in  particulars.  I 
have  been  a  laborer  and  an  employer.  It  is  my  con- 
viction, from  an  extensive  acquaintance  with  both, 
that  the  capitalist  has  a  more  just  ground  for  com- 
plaint than  has  the  laborer.  Recently  a  careful 
computation  of  the  case  between  capital  and  labor 
has  been  published.  It  is  largely  the  strike  account. 
The  cost  to  labor  in  the  one  year  now  closing  is  three 
quarters  of  a  billion  dollars.  It  would  be  interest- 
ing to  know  how  the  account  balances  when  the 
workingman  puts  in  his  pocket  the  increased  pay. 
But  what  of  the  capitalist?  The  laborer  has  forced 
a  loss  upon  him,  a  loss  over  a  billion  and  a  quarter 
of  dollars  in  the  same  year.  And  that  was  the 
money  of  the  public,  and  it  added  distress  of  higher 
cost  of  living  and  distress  for  things  withheld  from 
production.  It  was  largely  the  laborers'  loss  also, 
for  it  was  money  which  would  have  increased  busi- 
ness and  furnished  more  employment,  and  in  its 

353 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

regular  order,  a  larger  wage.  It  is  a  demonstration 
of  the  insane  folly  of  permitting  any  Bolshevistic 
federation  or  leadership  of  any  kind  to  set  labor 
against  capital.  Capital  and  labor  are  allies.  They 
must  be  in  friendly  and  cooperative  relation.  They 
are  not  nationally  nor  logically  opposed  to  each 
other,  and  the  men  who  set  them  against  each 
other  are  ignoramuses  in  the  first  principles  of  Sound 
economics  or  demagogues  who  are  playing  these 
great  coordinate  forces  into  their  contention  for 
supremacy.  They  care  nothing  for  the  laboring 
man.  They  are  the  only  enemies  of  the  working- 
man. 

Let  me  urge  the  friends  of  my  youth  and  of  my 
pastoral  oversight — an  inspiring  friendship — that  a 
great  responsibility  now  rests  upon  them.  They  are 
well  paid  and  generously  paid  as  compared  with  the 
preacher  and  the  teacher.  The  only  ground  for 
worry  and  anxiety  is  the  disturbed  conditions  of 
business,  for  which  they  are  largely  responsible,  by 
permitting  their  designing  and  scheming  leaders  to 
create  distrust  of  the  men  who  supply  wage  and  by 
inciting  the  enemies  of  our  country  to  disturb  the 
confidence  in  those  men  who  must  depend  for  credit 
upon  the  stability  of  our  financial  centers  for  the 
business  which  alone  can  supply  the  wage  earner 
with  his  job.  The  responsibility  is  upon  the  work- 
ingman,  for  his  producing  power  is  in  the  factory 
and  shop  and  his  credit  goes  into  every  store  in  the 
town. 

354 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

Our  citizens  should  not  consent,  for  an  hour,  to 
be  led  by  men  with  prison  records  and  by  men  who 
traduce  our  government  and  venomously  assail  the 
sources  of  our  manufacture  and  trade.  If  they  do, 
they  will  be  held  responsible  for  the  crimes  of  which 
their  leaders  are  guilty.  The  American  citizen 
needs  no  one  to  defend  him  against  his  government 
nor  to  protect  him  against  his  employer  and  his  non- 
union neighbor.  He  should  repudiate  such  signs  of 
disloyalty  and  weakness. 

America  expects  her  workingmen  to  be  citizens 
in  their  own  right.  They  must  not  ally  themselves 
with  any  element  which  opposes  their  country  or 
welcomes  here  any  principles  which  oppose  the  ut- 
most liberties  provided  in  our  state  and  national 
institutions.  They  must  not  become  anything  nor 
do  anything  which  classifies  them  as  of  .an  inferior 
or  dependent  order.  Under  no  circumstances  must 
they  be  herded  and  driven  as  raw  immigrants  are  by 
their  own  kind,  who  qualify  only  by  having  been 
longer  in  the  country.  It  is  degrading  to  American 
citizens.  Self-respecting  citizens  will  not  permit  it, 
nor  will  men  who  wear  such  a  yoke  be  respected  by 
their  neighbors.  For  such  things  to  be  is  to  cost  us 
independent  and  self-respecting  men  who  are  the 
most  valuable  source  of  our  citizenship,  and  the 
most  reliable  and  dependable  defenses  of  our  free 
institutions.  The  only  feature  of  serfdom  we  have 
in  this  country  is  in  those  men  who  refuse  citizenship 
and  permit  themselves  to  be  controlled,  body  and 

355 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

soul,  by  designing  men  who  would  forsake  them 
to-morrow  were  it  not  for  the  large  share  which 
they  have  in  the  ignorant  man's  wage.  We  should 
not  permit  such  a  condition  in  our  country,  and  it 
is  a  humiliating  disgrace  that  native-born  American 
citizens  should  be  found  among  these  serfs.  Noth- 
ing but  freedom  fits  into  our  country.  None  but 
free  men,  capable,  intelligent,  self-governing,  loyal, 
have  a  right  to  a  place  in  America.  Such  men  soon 
own  their  own  property  and  save  their  own  wage 
and  choose  their  own  State  and  national  representa- 
tives. No  citizens  should  be  higher,  none  more 
safely  trusted.  Our  land  should  be  secure  in  the 
hands  of  our  independent  and  self-reliant  working- 
men. 

My  neighbor  the  workingman  should  insist  that 
his  union  shall  standardize  its  men  and  their  work, 
and  lift  employment  out  of  the  haphazard  and 
conflicting  conditions  which  are  a  source  of  conten- 
tion. It  has  come  to  pass  that  any  group  of  men, 
however  inefficient,  can  agree  overnight  to  push 
their  wage  into  an  absurd  figure  for  the  kind  of 
work  they  do,  and  compel  employers  to  grant  it 
or  compromise  by  some  substantial  advance.  It 
does  great  mischief  to  labor  and  arouses  antagonism 
among  employers.  Take  the  case  of  the  ashmen. 
Suddenly  in  winter  snows  and  zero  weather  they  see 
their  opportunity  to  prey  upon  the  householder  and 
strike  for  absurd  pay  for  their  services.  The  man 
who,  before  the  war,  was  glad  to  take  two  dollars 

356 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

or  less  for  a  day's  work,  demands  five  dollars,  not 
because  the  high  cost  of  living  has  reached  him,  but 
because  he  believes  he  can  force  it  upon  a  helpless 
community.  There  should  be  an  authority  to  resist 
this,  and  it  should  be  among  the  workingmen  them- 
selves. They  should  be  responsible  for  insisting 
upon  justice  among  workingmen  and  resisting  un- 
fair and  cruel  treatment  of  the  community  by  any 
class  of  laborers.  The  unions  should  standardize 
labor.  A  scale  should  be  fixed,  a  definite  measure 
should  be  set  up.  There  should  be  a  common 
agreement  as  to  values  of  labor  in  trades  or  callings, 
and  of  laborers  of  the  same  trade  according  to  their 
proficiency  and  the  quality  of  their  work.  And  men 
should  not  be  permitted  to  select  a  time  to  enforce 
their  demands  which  causes  suffering  and  embarrass- 
ment to  the  community — to  the  poor  not  less  than  to 
the  rich,  to  the  sick  and  to  the  well.  The  country 
has  long  felt  the  injustice  of  unclassified  work. 
Workingmen  owe  it  to  themselves  to  standardize 
and  to  demand  simple  and  plain  justice  upon  the 
part  of  labor  if  they  are  to  expect  it  from  employers. 


357 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

WE  have  shown  plainly  that  the  workingman  is 
one  of  the  best  paid  of  all  men  in  this  country, 
whether  he  is  the  coal  miner,  the  railroad  man,  the 
skilled  mechanic,  or  the  manual  laborer.  Wages 
have  doubled  and  quadrupled.  The  Italian  digging 
a  ditch  gets  more  pay  than  the  school-teacher  fitting 
young  America  with  his  first  ideas.  The  carpenter 
is  paid  more,  twice  over,  than  the  average  preacher 
of  all  denominations  combined.  The  railroad  en- 
gineer of  government-managed  roads  receives  more 
than  the  college  professor.  It  all  resolves  itself 
into  the  question :  Do  teachers  of  common  schools, 
professors  in  colleges,  and  preachers  get  too  little, 
or  do  the  workingmen  receive  too  much?  It  is 
certain  that  the  teachers  and  preachers  do  not  get 
too  much,  nor  do  they  get  half  what  they  ought  to 
have.  Their  conditions  are  a  disgrace  to  their  con- 
stituents, whether  of  the  town  or  the  church. 
There  is  high  authority  for  an  earnest  claim  for 
them — "The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire."  And 
there  can  be  no  higher  service  to  mankind  than 
they  are  rendering. 

Is  the  workingman  receiving  too  much,  and  is  he 
358 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

waiting  a  decrease  in  the  high  cost  of  living  or  is  it 
a  new  and  permanent  scale  of  wage  which  must  be 
kept  up  because  in  a  decade  or  more  it  has  been  too 
low?  I  think  that  I  have  reason  for  believing  the 
latter.  Have  the  changed  conditions  of  the  average 
man,  the  needs  of  the  new  and  better  way  of  living, 
his  part  in  the  responsibilities  of  life,  made  it  neces- 
sary for  him  to  set  a  higher  price  upon  his  labor? 
Can  he  meet  the  new  scale  of  obligations  on  the  old 
scale  of  wage?  Must  not  the  times,  which  have 
placed  upon  him  this  new  order  of  things,  help  him 
carry  it?  It  is  a  practical  question  as  to  whether 
our  country  wants  this  new  condition,  and  if  it  does, 
can  it  afford  to  pay  for  it.  Thinking  men  and 
women  will  say  we  must  have  the  best  conditions 
possible  for  our  laboring  men.  The  country  de- 
mands it.  Our  civilization,  our  progress,  our  pros- 
perity, have  their  roots  in  the  contentment  and  thrift 
of  the  men  of  mechanic  arts  and  manual  labor.  The 
better  homes  they  live  in,  the  more  comforts  within 
these  homes,  the  nearer  they  live  like  the  well-to-do, 
the  more  promptly  their  bills  are  paid,  the  more  like 
other  folk  they  and  their  wives  dress,  the  more  self- 
respecting  their  boys  and  girls  are,  the  better  it  is 
for  our  land  and  country,  the  greater  country  we 
shall  have.  Our  prosperity  is  not  in  the  number 
of  our  millionaires,  even  if  it  is  seldom  that  one 
of  them  lives  to  himself,  but  it  is  in  the  general  thrift 
and  frugality  and  happiness  of  the  average  man.  I 
purposely  avoid  saying  the  common  people,  for  I 

359 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

was  reared  to  respect  and  revere  the  honest,  temper- 
ate, hard-working  American  man,  who  daily  bends 
his  back  to  the  common  burden.  It  will  be  a  sad 
day  for  this  land  when  that  man  cannot  dig  enough 
out  of  life's  task  to  make  a  happy  home  for  his 
family.  The  divine  obligation  is  upon  him.  The 
man  who  does  not  care  for  his  own  household  is 
worse  than  an  infidel,  is  the  teaching  of  the  Holy 
Scriptures.  And  a  land  which  does  not  provide  for 
the  possibilities  of  that  family's  self-support,  in  its 
laws  and  economics,  and  enforce  those  possibilities 
by  a  vigorous  common  sentiment,  should  not  call  it- 
self a  Christian  land. 

We  want,  therefore,  the  highest  and  noblest  estate 
for  our  fellow  workers  who  labor  for  wage.  It 
should  be  inculcated  as  a  common  sentiment,  not 
as  a  concession  and  in  no  form  of  a  charity.  It 
must  be  arranged  so  that  it  is  a  right,  as  much  as 
the  right  to  trade  -at  a  profit,  and  to  manufacture, 
and  to  build,  and  to  invest  for  legitimate  gain.  The 
workingman  must  be  on  the  same  plane  with  his 
prosperous  neighbors. 

One  of  the  secrets  of  the  stability  of  our  country 
and  of  its  progress  is  that  our  people  are  expected 
to  own  property.  The  savings  bank  is  a  temporary 
arrangement  for  the  safe  accumulation  of  wages. 
The  objective  is  a  home  and  with  it  goes  the  thought 
of  citizenship.  Communism  is  destructive  to  citizen- 
ship and  never  has  succeeded  from  the  first  days  of 
the  common  necessity  of  Christ's  disciples  to  the 

360 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

transcendentalists  at  Brook  Farm.  Bolshevism,  be- 
sides active  destructive  elements, '  carries  its  own 
downfall  in  denying  individual  property  and  rights, 
or  permitting  only  a  scattered  and  unearned  posses- 
sion of  properties  robbed  from  rightful  owners. 
There  is  a  firm  anchorage  for  the  man  of  the  little 
farm  to  which  he  holds  a  title  defended  by  the  state. 
His  home,  to  which  he  holds  a  deed,  even  if  mort- 
gaged, gives  weight  and  dignity  to  his  vote.  He  feels 
that  he  has  a  voice  which  no  man  can  deny  him,  be- 
cause he  owns  property.  It  fixes  his  habitation.  He 
is  not  a  tramp  nor  a  wanderer  uncounted  and  unac- 
countable. He  has  a  street  and  number,  and  what- 
ever concerns  the  town  is  his  concern.  Anything 
which  affects  its  property,  its  health,  its  good  name, 
has  to  do  with  his  property.  It  is  easy  to  see  the 
bearing  of  a  man's  property  upon  the  prices  and 
thrift,  the  prosperity  and  contentment  of  a  com- 
munity. It  can  be  seen  that  an  intelligent  business 
town  is  paying  in  wages  for  something  more  than  the 
cost  of  manufactured  articles  in  days'  work.  It  gets 
a  citizen.  It  is  paying  for  general  thrift.  It  helps 
build  the  homes  and  fixes  the  quality  of  the  goods 
bought  and  paid  for  in  the  stores.  Many  large 
manufacturing  firms  build  homes  for  their  help  to 
live  in  at  a  nominal  rent,  and  this  is  commendable. 
Unfortunately,  such  help  has  not  the  making  of 
citizenship.  But  it  is  an  infinite  improvement  when 
the  laborers  own  their  homes  and  pay  their  own 
taxes  and  with  pride  make  the  repairs.  This  is 

361 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

American  citizenship  and  it  is  an  invaluably  impor- 
tant part  of  our  best  citizenship.  We  lose  it  at  our 
peril. 

If  we  could  have  but  one  of  two  conditions, 
namely,  a  thousand  men  in  a  community  owning  and 
supporting  their  cottages  with  labor  and  thrift,  or 
one  multimillionaire  with  other  men  working  for 
wages  only,  it  were  far  better  for  the  community  to 
have  the  thousand  men  than  the  one.  The  ideal 
way  is  to  have  them  both.  That  puts  no  limit  on  the 
poor  man;  and  it  is  from  the  poor  that  the  rich  come 
in  nearly  all  cases,  not  because  they  are  poor,  but  we 
have  discovered  in  our  country  that  among  the  poor 
are  often  found  some  of  the  keenest  and  clearest 
minds  of  the  land. 

There  is  every  logical  reason  for  America  to  pro- 
mote the  thrift  of  the  working  people,  and  it  has 
not  been  backward  in  doing  so.  It  sounds  strange 
in  our  ears  to  hear  men,  foreign-born,  declaiming 
against  our  institutions  and  laws  as  unfriendly  to  our 
laboring  people.  Such  empty  talk  is  from  sources  of 
dense  ignorance.  This  fact  cannot  be  enforced  too 
vigorously  upon  our  people. 

America  is  made  up  of  the  plain,  intelligent,  faith- 
ful workers.  We  have  no  trouble  with  them.  They 
always  have  been  reasonable  and  have  shared  their 
country's  lot  and  destiny  without  complaint.  Those 
who  disturb  our  land  have  no  claim  upon  us.  They 
have  no  right  to  stay  here.  They  do  not  earn  that 
right  and  are  justly  deported,  and  should  have  been 

362 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

shipped  away  decades  ago.  The  hundred-per-cent 
American  laid  our  foundations  deep  and  strong.  He 
came  here  with  freedom  in  his  heart,  or  he  was  born 
here  with  law  and  order  as  his  creed.  He  fought 
the  battles  which  made  us  free  and  kept  us  one 
people.  He  went  millions  strong  across  the  seas 
to  battle  for  the  world's  freedom.  He  has  returned 
to  keep  in  sacred  trust  that  freedom  in  these  United 
States.  He  has  been  overwhelmingly  in  numbers 
and  force  the  workingman.  He  was  in  the  begin- 
ning. He  has  been  all  the  way  up  through  our 
history.  Every  American  wants  this  man,  in  shop 
or  farm  or  wherever  he  toils,  to  have  all  that  there 
is  for  him,  and  insists  that  whatever  there  is  in  law 
needed  by  him  he  shall  have  that  law.  The  country 
will  do  all  for  him  that  it  can  do  and  be  just  to  other 
men  in  both  law  and  wage.  But  if  this  country  is 
to  afford  this  increased  wage  and  start  out  with  it  in 
a  new  and  permanent  epoch,  the  workingman  must 
help  carry  the  burden.  He  must  not  expect  it  to  be 
done  for  him,  or  set  up  the  claim  of  back  pay  for  an 
underpaid  past.  There  must  be  an  equivalent  upon 
his  part.  It  must  be  a  wage  for  service  rendered 
and  not  a  bonus  out  of  other  men's  business.  Is 
the  workingman  ready  to  enter  into  such  a  bargain 
with  the  community  in  which  he  lives?  Will  he  do 
all  the  work  that  the  business  requires  and  be  con- 
tent with  what  it  can  pay,  until  he  helps  it  pay  more? 
It  is  a  plain  case  of  arithmetic.  What  is  paid  must 
be  paid  out  of  what  is  produced.  If  time  is  wasted, 

363 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

it  is  a  loss  as  truly  as  it  is  if  material  is  wasted.  If 
power  is  shut  down  or  run  on  short  time,  it  is  the 
same  as  leaving  raw  material  unused  and  not  worked 
into  the  typewriter,  the  automobile,  or  whatever  is 
produced  in  a  factory.  If  the  day  laborer  intends 
to  have  double  the  old-time  pay,  he  must  give  the 
manufacturer  a  chance  to  make  it.  He  must  not 
waste  a  billion  and  a  half  of  wage  money  in  six 
months,  nor  force  his  employer  to  lose  two  and  a 
half  billion  dollars  in  the  same  time.  The  four 
billions  loss  to  the  country  by  strikes  during  the  past 
year  would  have  put  wages  on  a  sound  and  greatly 
increased  basis  for  a  long  time.  It  was  a  loss.  The 
goods  were  not  produced.  The  world  did  not  re- 
ceive them.  It  is  four  billions  poorer,  and  the  loss 
cannot  be  recovered.  I  am  not  discussing  the  fault. 
It  may  have  been  on  both  sides.  I  am  stating  a  fact. 
Such  planning  will  make  it  impossible  for  wages  to 
remain  where  they  are.  Wages  cannot  be  forced 
above  production,  and  they  cannot  long  be  kept  be- 
low production.  Wages  are  not  arbitrarily  de- 
termined by  either  capital  or  labor.  As  everybody 
who  thinks  must  know,  they  have  their  own  law  by 
which  they  ebb  and  flow,  as  truly  as  the  sea.  Pro- 
duce the  goods,  or  do  not  produce  the  goods.  The 
result  is  as  visible  as  neap  tides  and  full  tides.  If 
the  workingmen  reduce  the  hours  and  force  up  the 
wages,  the  goods  must  pay  it,  both  the  short  time 
and  the  increased  pay  envelope.  Business  is  not 
done  as  a  charity.  It  must  pay  dividends  or  it  will 

364 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

not  be  done.  Business  is  not  done  to  help  the 
laborer.  It  is  willing  to  pay  for  what  it  gets.  Is 
the  workingman  willing  to  work  for  what  he  is  paid? 
If  he  arrogantly  demands  more  pay  and  insolently 
loafs  on  the  job,  if  he  not  only  shortens  hours  but 
obstructs  men  who  want  work  and  must  work  if 
they  live,  the  price  of  manufactured  commodities  is 
correspondingly  increased  and  the  people  must  pay 
their  money  for  the  higher-priced  article  and  cannot 
pay  it  for  wages ;  or,  if  they  do  pay  it  for  wages  in 
the  higher  price  for  the  article,  quickly  the  money 
is  reduced  in  price  and  higher  wage  is  worth  no  more 
than  lower  wage.  The  workingman  has  the  de- 
termination of  the  whole  question  of  wage  in  his  own 
hands.  It  is  production.  The  world  can  afford 
the  wage  and  will  be  made  to  see  its  justice,  if  the 
laborer  will  produce  the  goods.  This  is  the  solution 
of  the  problem.  It  is  not  profit-sharing.  That  is 
impracticable.  In  exceptional  cases,  with  business 
of  exceptional  adaptations,  it  will  work  for  a  time, 
but  as  a  general  rule  it  will  not  work,  and  the  work- 
ingman should  not  waste  his  time  contending  over  it. 
He  puts  nothing  into  the  profit  side  of  the  business, 
except  his  labor,  and  that  he  is  to  be  paid  for  with 
a  sufficient  wage.  He  plans  no  market  nor  buys 
material.  He  takes  no  chances  of  loss,  nor  puts  on 
the  road  agents  of  the  firm.  He  establishes  no 
credit  at  the  bank,  and  carries  no  risks  of  compensa- 
tion and  accident,  nor  fire  and  flood.  It  is  folly  to 
attempt  to  mix  the  labor  and  the  capital  of  a  business 

365 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

and  make  either  do  both.  If  workingmen  are  to 
have  a  share  in  the  profits,  they  must  stand  their 
part  of  the  loss.  There  would  be  more  friction  and 
contention  by  suspicion  of  dishonesty  or  charge  of 
inefficient  business  management  than  we  now  have 
in  disputes  over  the  length  of  the  day  and  the  size  of 
the  pay  envelope. 

A  modified  Bolshevism,  in  which  the  laborer  is  to 
take  a  part  in  the  business  management  and  profits 
and  at  the  same  time  is  responsible  for  the  wage- 
earning,  will  never  fit  into  a  republic  where  all  those 
matters  have  been  wrought  out  and  are  guided  by 
laws  which  provide  for  all  emergencies  and  changes. 
The  workingman,  who  ascends  to  property  owner- 
ship, must  permit  his  employer,  who  provides  the 
business,  to  own  and  manage  his  own  property.  The 
practical  question  is  for  the  artisan  and  hand  laborer 
to  make  the  business  pay  profit  to  the  owner  and 
more  wages  to  the  worker,  if  honest  work  will  do  it. 
And  that  is  so  simple  and  elementary  that  it  requires 
no  complicated  machinery  on  either  side.  It  does 
not  demand  high-salaried  agitators,  nor  an  expensive 
organization  by  the  workers.  To-day,  if  the  fore- 
most papers  of  the  country  may  be  believed,  the 
day  laborers  are  paying  immense  sums  for  a  ma- 
chinery for  the  purpose  of  guarding  their  exclusive 
rights  and  wages,  which  their  country  can  do  better. 
Men  who  occupy  their  time  in  shouting  against  em- 
ployers control  millions  of  fees  and  funds.  Men 
who  lament  the  hard  lot  of  the  American  working- 

366 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

man  are  paid  from  ten  thousand  to  eighteen  thou- 
sand dollars  annually  in  salaries  besides  traveling 
expenses,  to  keep  up  a  row  in  the  world  of  labor. 

All  these  union  expenses  and  high  salaries  should 
be  cut  out  and  the  men  should  turn  their  unions  into 
mutual  benefit  clubs,  to  which  all  self-respecting  toil- 
ers are  welcome.  With  strikes  abandoned  and  un- 
lawful, there  will  be  no  demand  for  the  lobbyist  and 
stump-speaker,  and  the  workingman  can  devote  him- 
self to  the  humanity  of  a  common  brotherhood  and 
the  self-respect  of  his  citizenship.  It  will  be  a  great 
day  for  the  workingman  when  he  stops  fighting  his 
employer  and  combines  with  him  in  a  common  inter- 
est. When  he  gets  rid  of  the  foreign-born  meddler, 
he  will  make  a  large  contribution  to  the  increase  of 
day  wages.  We  can  afford  the  greater  wages  when 
we  all  pull  together.  Whenever  we  have  worked 
together  in  this  country  we  never  have  had  starving 
laborers.  We  have  had  some  squalor  and  misery 
from  the  saloons,  but  our  sober  and  faithful  workers 
could  always  earn  a  healthful  living,  and  now  the 
days  will  brighten  and  the  old-time  citizenship  will 
come  back  as  we  return  to  American  wages  and 
leave  to  their  false  gods  the  blind  prophets  of  labor 
who  have  led  our  workingmen  into  the  ditch.  We 
can  afford  the  higher  wage  if  it  is  to  give  us  greater 
men. 

One  of  the  faults  of  our  country  is  its  wrong 
objective,  and  in  this  our  laborers  have  been 
schooled  assiduously  for  a  generation.  Increased 

367 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

pay  has  been  set  before  them  by  leaders  from  lands 
of  poverty  and  conditions  of  discomfort  and  distress, 
and  there  has  been  example  sufficient  from  the 
prosperous  of  our  own  land  who  have  not  regarded 
economy  and  frugality  in  their  personal  and  home 
habits,  but  who  have  made  money  their  god.  The 
passion  has  been  to  get  more,  and  then  to  get  more, 
and  keep  it  all  for  one's  appetite  and  ambition. 
There  have  been  noble  exceptions,  but  they  have 
been  exceptions.  They  can  be  counted  easily  in  any 
community.  They  are  conspicuous  in  the  nation.  The 
purpose  of  getting  money,  the  great  and  useful  things 
to  do  with  it,  are  forgotten.  All  is  left  for  a  hurried 
legacy,  and  usually  that  is  all  required  to  meet  the 
cultivated  extravagances  of  a  family  record  in  an 
atmosphere  of  riches.  No  wonder  the  toilers 
measure  their  condition  with  this  pattern  and  forget 
the  contentment  enjoined  as  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  a  useful  and  happy  life.  We  cannot 
afford  to  have  men  prosperous  in  any  callings,  if  they 
are  not  to  add  to  the  community  something  more 
than  physical  prosperity.  We  must  have  more  man- 
hood than  property  in  every  town  in  our  America. 
We  can  afford  to  pay  the  highest  wages  if  they  are 
going  into  greater  intelligence,  greater  loyalty, 
sounder  religion  in  charity,  in  fraternity,  and  ways 
of  practical  usefulness.  Such  wages  are  an  invest- 
ment. We  cannot  afford  not  to  pay  them.  The 
trouble  has  been,  not  that  employers  grudge  good 
wage,  they  insist  that  the  men  shall  be  worth  it. 

368 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

Much  that  they  employ  is  unfit  in  every  way.  The 
manufacturer  has  equipped  his  factory  with  ma- 
chines of  delicate  mechanism  at  great  cost.  To 
heat  a  journal  or  break  a  gear  or  bend  a  shaft  out  of 
line  means  an  instant  loss  of  hundreds  of  dollars. 
The  employer  cannot  afford  to  have  that  man  among 
his  machines  at  any  price,  but  the  present  system 
forces  him  to  take  help  sent  to  him  with  a  ticket 
from  the  union. 

The  first  thing  to  be  demanded,  if  the  community 
is  to  keep  the  high  wage  where  it  now  is  and  increase 
it,  is  that  the  man  who  expects  it  shall  qualify  the 
man  who  is  to  receive  it  in  his  manhood.  I  know 
that  gumption  is  born,  but  common  sense,  just  plain 
common  sense,  can  be  cultivated.  And  one  of  the 
greatest  elements  in  proficiency  is  a  high  type  of 
manhood.  The  moral  traits  enter  largely  into  the 
qualities  of  an  artisan.  They  are  fine,  polished, 
firm  grain  of  his  composition.  They  are  like  the 
rhythmic  sense  of  the  musician,  the  color  of  the  ar- 
tist, the  vision  of  the  architect.  Every  workingman 
should  qualify  for  the  best  that  can  be  done  with 
skilled  hands  and  the  tools  of  the  mechanic,  and 
the  first  principle  of  it  all  is  plain,  old-fashioned 
manhood.  That  man  will  not  have  to  spend  his 
evenings  growling  and  gnashing  his  teeth  at  capital- 
ists and  plutocrats.  He  will  belong  in  their  com- 
pany and  have  a  common  interest  with  them.  It  is 
the  surest  way  to  increase  wages. 

Every  community  can  afford  to  pay  the  working- 
369 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

man  his  full  share  when  he  takes  his  place  as  a  citi- 
zen who  qualifies  for  the  best  things.  Our  public 
schools  are  to  help  him.  The  whole  spirit  of 
America  appeals  to  him.  He  is  the  man  who  should 
be  employed.  It  is  a  serious  question  whether  a 
contractor  should  hire  brutal  men  over  and  above 
men  of  intelligence  and  the  American  habits  of  liv- 
ing. Thousands  of  foreign-born  men  are  among 
our  best  citizens,  and  such  have  been  welcomed  to 
our  shores  by  ship  loads.  But  they  have  assimilated 
and  are  the  proverbial  one-hundred-per  cent  Ameri- 
cans. I  insist  that  if  the  builder  and  manufacturer 
are  to  pay  first-class  wages,  they  must  have  first- 
class  men.  Second-class  men,  who  are  contented  to 
be  so,  must  accept  second-class  pay.  The  mischief 
done  labor  by  the  practice  of  the  unions  in  forcing 
all  kinds  at  the  same  price  has  been  done  at  an 
enormous  cost  to  our  country.  We  cannot  afford  it. 
The  intelligent  workingmen  cannot  afford  it.  It 
must  be  an  immensely  greater  gain  to  put  every 
man  on  his  merits  than  to  protect  labor  by  barring 
apprentices  and  slowing  up  the  job. 

If  we  are  to  have  high  wages,  the  contractor  can- 
not do  it  alone.  The  workingman  must  help.  He 
must  do  his  full  share.  He  must  make  his  labor 
worth  the  capitalist's  money.  He  must  make  his 
labor  produce  all  that  it  is  paid  for,  and  these  two— 
the  money  and  the  labor — will  compel  high  wages. 
It  is  all  summed  up  in  a  few  plain  principles :  The 
workingman  must  be  an  American;  if  not  American 

370 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

born,  he  must  be  American  loyal.  If  born  here, 
our  public  schools  will  take  care  of  his  common  in- 
telligence. If  foreign  born,  he  must  learn  our 
language  and  use  it.  He  must  read  our  papers  in 
English  and  study  our  Constitution.  Night  schools 
will  help  him.  He  should  read  Lincoln's  great  in- 
augural and  the  Gettysburg  address,  and  the  utter- 
ances of  other  of  our  immortal  statesmen.  The 
public  library  will  furnish  them  to  him,  the  school- 
teacher, the  preacher,  the  rabbi,  the  priest  will  tell 
him  about  them.  If  he  stays  here,  he  must  obey  the 
laws  which  protect  him.  If  he  does  not,  we  should 
send  him  back  whence  he  came.  It  is  our  duty  to 
protect  our  own  country  from  all  foes.  Foolish 
sentimentalism  about  free  speech  is  an  insidious  foe 
of  us  all,  and  of  none  more  than  of  the  workingman, 
who  must  first  be  a  patriot.  He  must  put  his  coun- 
try first.  The  workingman's  organization  must  be 
for  self-improvement  and  not  for  obstructing  and 
hindering  any  man.  A  union  has  no  more  right  to 
keep  another  man  out  of  work  because  he  does  not 
belong  with  the  union  than  I  have  because  he  does 
not  belong  to  my  church.  The  workingman  should  do 
away  with  the  walking  delegate,  and  come  face  to 
face  with  his  employer.  Get  rid  of  the  salaried  mis- 
chief-makers and  meddlers.  Every  workingman 
should  put  his  manhood  beyond  his  wage.  It  is  the 
surest  way  to  become  a  high-priced  man. 

The    workingman    should    abandon    the    strike 
whether  the  law  commands  it  or  not.     It  is  uncivil- 

371 


MY  NEIGHBOR  THE  WORKINGMAN 

ized  and  barbarous.  It  works  against  higher  wages. 
The  menace  of  it  is  figured  into  the  cost  of  every 
contract,  and  that  figures  it  out  of  wages.  The  edi- 
torial contention  in  a  great  New  York  paper,  that 
the  anti-strike  law  compels  a  man  to  do  honest  work 
against  his  will,  is  nothing  more  than  silly.  There 
is  no  sound  sense  in  it.  The  proposed 'law  does 
not  force  any  man  to  work.  It  only  provides  against 
a  conspiracy  of  workingmen  to  prevent  work  by 
anybody.  In  recent  strikes  in  the  great  steel  plants 
thousands  of  men  believed  the  strike  a  mistake  and 
were  opposed  to  it,  but  were  forced  against  their 
judgment  to  join  the  strikers  of  their  unions. 

The  character  of  a  strike  is  seen  in  destruction 
of  property,  assaults,  and  murders.  The  call  for 
soldiers  and  an  extra  police  guard  tells  the  story. 
The  strike  stands  for  everything  which  America 
opposes.  It  is  violence.  It  is  riot.  It  opposes 
liberty.  It  is  dangerous  to  life  by  exciting  men  to 
unrestrained  and  dangerous  passions.  It  takes  con- 
trol of  properties  unlawfully  and  forces  loss  into 
business,  forbidding  construction  and  manufacture. 
It  destroys  credit  in  trade  and  reduces  the  profits 
from  which  wage  is  paid. 

No  one  would  object  if  dissatisfied  men  were  to 
leave  a  job  and  go  quietly  away  to  another,  leaving 
those  satisfied  to  remain  and  work,  or  the  employers 
to  hire  whom  they  please.  That  is  every  man's 
privilege.  It  is  different  from  the  conspiracy  of  the 
strike  which  violates  every  right  and  privilege  and 

372 


MY  NEIGHBOR'S  FUTURE  WAGE 

should  be  forbidden,  if  any  conspiracy  should  be  un- 
lawful. 

I  argue  for  higher  wage,  higher  than  we  are  now 
paying,  if  the  workingman  will  join  the  employing 
man  in  furnishing  the  money  to  pay  it.  Such  a 
higher  wage  the  employer  would  be  glad  to  pay,  and 
such  a  wage  honestly  earned  is  the  only  one  a  laborer 
has  a  right  to  expect.  Our  American  workingmen, 
greatest  in  number,  found  in  all  callings,  dependable 
in  all  things,  are  our  greatest  citizens.  They  must 
never  forget  that  they  are  citizens.  They  must  not 
forget  that  the  capitalists  are  citizens  also  and  with- 
out them  the  fires  would  go  out  under  the  boilers  and 
the  wheels  would  not  turn  an  hour.  The  labor  agi- 
tator who  assails  capitalists  and  makes  laborers  their 
enemies  is  a  fool  among  men  and  a  traitor  to 
the  country  and  to  the  workingmen  whom  he  betrays 
for  demagogic  purposes. 

True  Americans  will  work  together  for  good 
citizenship,  good  business,  good  wages,  and  good 
fellowship. 


373 


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iio\t 


LD  21-100m-7,'33 


YB   19142 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


